


What Do You See That I Don't?

by TactlessEvergreen



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Denial, Don't read if you haven't finished the game, Dont take care of pets if you dont have time or energy, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Loneliness, Mewo the accidental therapy cat, More characters to come~, Subtle animal neglect at the beginning, Sunny being tsundere towards mewo, Sunny cant take care of cats, Sunny doesn't start off too fond of Mewo but that changes i swear, Takes place several months after The Incident, This game has no supernatural elements :), Trying to subtly imply locked up memories and redirected feelings, Working up towards angst, tags will be added as i go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29260275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TactlessEvergreen/pseuds/TactlessEvergreen
Summary: Sunny just really, really wishes he could sleep 24/7, or at leastalmostthat amount of time without interruption... but he can admit that it's easier to stand being awake with some company.A canon-divergent (or compliant? :3c) AU exploring what it would be like if Mewo were still with Sunny after The Incident.
Relationships: Kel & Mewo (OMORI), Kel & Sunny's Mother (OMORI), Sunny & Mewo (OMORI)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 187





	1. It's Your Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> This fic starts several months after The Stairs Incident. I'll be putting a lot of personal headcanons in this fic, including and most importantly for now: I HC that Sunny blocked out his trauma a lot more "effectively" in the beginning than he did later on. This means, among other things, he wasn't immediately deathly afraid of stairs, and his personality reflects a lot of how he was before the Incident (or, how I imagine he was before). It's as if he's in the first stage of grief, "denial," with some bouts of anger (especially when he's tired) while depression hides in the background for a while. He's also pushing people away.

Someone had to take care of Mewo.

There were only two options, really. Get rid of the cat, or Sunny's mother would care for it. Sunny's mother reasoned that it was loved and that it was part of the family. Sunny didn't care, if only it weren't for the fact that his mother was out working. All the time. And often forgot to feed it. Against all reason, the thing was kept.

Sunny could hear it crying outside his door, right now. He was really trying to sleep. A long four hours of homeschool and one of chores and Sunny was ready for 13 more of straight darkness and half-remembered fantasies. The wakeful annoyance in his mind clashes with the languidness weighing down his bones in a tortuous symphony of _please just let Sunny sleep, you stupid cat._

Scritch scritch, replies the door, in cahoots with the cat to ruin Sunny's day, and his annoyance spikes - so he viciously throws the comforter across the room. Sunny instantly regrets that, angry energy fading just as fast as it came, and grimaces at the cool air washing away his hard-earned relaxed state. He starfishes on the bed, still ever unwilling to get up.

It meows again. He turns his glare towards the door. The door meows twice more, undeterred. Sunny considers waiting for it to go away, but the wakefulness is full blast and the cat has gone for hours before. He feels a twinge of.. something, at that. It's hard to identify. 

Whatever, it's just another chore. Maybe he'll tire himself out on the stairs. 

Sunny pushes himself up first on elbows, then hands. Sits there for a moment. Hears a meow. Drags his legs to dangle off the bed. Stares exhaustedly at the floor. Meow. Shifts forward a bit. Scritch scritch. He really doesn't feel like doing this. He stands up anyway.

Sunny feels the world weighing down on his shoulders and shallowly wonders if he's ready to sleep again. The door meows, _very_ drawn out this time. Ugh.

When Sunny opens the door, it's to a silent cat that looks nowhere near as sad as it sounded. He looks at it. It looks at him. Silence rings and he's about to close the door.  
Then, in a graceful display of impudence, the cat intently makes its way to the stairs. Sunny grudgingly follows.

Sunny makes his trip down shakily, heart thudding with (decidedly) exertion, hands gripping the railing hard, and he puts all his focus on Mewo making the trip slowly beside him. Probably policing him to make sure he doesn't cop out on feeding it. It almost seems to struggle just as he is, carefully hopping from step to step. He focuses on how funny it looks for Mewo to, basically, walk sideways down the stairs, until he tries to reach his foot through the floor after the last step and stumbles towards the kitchen.

Sunny exhales the breath he was holding, already veritably exhausted. Sleeping so much made any minuscule amount of exercise hard, he concluded.

The cat very suddenly races ahead. So much for policing.

The bag of cat food is behind the counter. It's a big, tall, full 35-pound bag with a slit at the top corner. Sunny remembers what kibble looks like, figuring it's a lot like pouring cereal, and attempts to lift up the bag. It's heavy. The food bowl is in the other room. The bag slips through his grip before it's ever picked up, and Sunny considers giving up.

There's an irksome, drawn-out meow from the dining room. Sunny grits his teeth.

He crouches down and tries to heave the bag using his back - and it lifts inches off the ground. Sunny almost hears the sweet jingle of accomplishment ring in the back of his head just before his feet slip, the bag and half its contents falling all over him and the floor. He lays there in a moment of affronted shock. Considers staying there, but the smell of kibble is too pungent to sleep to, unfortunately.

...More kibble spills across the floor as he rolls the bag off of him and stands up. Sunny stares at the mess for a moment, frustrated beyond feeling it, until the idea pops into his mind that the cat could be blamed for this. Maybe get kicked out for it. The cat can eat off the floor, he decides, and makes his way back up the stairs a little slower than before.

\-------------------------------------------------lol-----------------------------------------------

Straight from zero to a hundred, Sunny's floaty, near-completely-asleep state shatters in an instant of falling gracelessly back into reality and kicking his covers off the bed in a fit of panic. The cold air stung his nerves worse than before, but it did so about a thousand times less than the soft, insistent mewls coming from behind his door. Again.

What more did the thing want?? Sunny hurled his only pillow at the door.

The cat shut up at that.

Sunny lazily slid across his bed, reached for his comforter on the ground, bunched part of it up as a pillow, and curled under the rest of it. He refused to wake up more by getting up again. He stalwartly refused to acknowledge his already complete wakefulness.

But of course, the door meowed again.

Sunny squinted at the window. It looked to be about sunset - wasn't his mother home yet? But, right... Sunny had forgotten. His mother works a weird schedule now, after getting a second job. He never knows when she's home anymore.

Once more, it meows. It could be a thousand times more afterward. Sunny doesn't want to bet on his mother arriving any time soon. The door scritches. Ugh. He can feel a headache starting to form from near-sleeping and waking up repeatedly. Meow.

He throws his comforter. It doesn't hit the door. There's no pause this time before it meows again.

As much as Sunny wants to hit something right now, the effort it took to throw both his pillow and blanket makes him exhausted. And not the kind of exhaustion that will allow him to escape into the sanctity of slumber. He huffs wearily, and uses what irritated energy he has left to heave himself out of bed and to the now smugly silent doorway. He gets up too quickly, it seems, as his headache worsens.

He opens it, and finds the cat already making its way to the stairs. Sunny wasn't even given the chance to level his glare onto the pesty thing, vicious as the pounding in his skull. Coward. Sunny follows and thinks he should be offended, being ordered around by a pet, and tries to take whatever smug satisfaction he can from watching the cat struggle with each step again. 

It walks him into the kitchen, straight past the mass of spilled cat food, and into the dining room. Right in front of the empty food bowl. The cat sits in front of it expectantly - with the very obvious, free-access, all-you-can-eat buffet of spilled la nourriture pour chat in view from the other room. And it stares straight at Sunny.

Sunny is... floored. Aren't cats supposed to have a super sense of smell? He can smell the kibble odor from here. How is it ignoring that? Don't they do whatever they can to eat as much as possible? Sunny knows the cats in town, and they're the chubbiest, most gluttonous creatures he's ever observed. The only reason the rodent population still thrives is because those cats are _just that bogged down_ by how overfed they are. And yet this cat stares anywhere but the food - straight at Sunny, actually, like he hasn't already (sort of) set out something to eat.

If this thing doesn't like to eat off the floor, Sunny can't help it. That wasn't dog food, right? Sunny wouldn't be surprised if his mother got a dog to fill the house with, wouldn't be surprised if he slept through that. He glances at the food bag. Cat kibble. All of Sunny's frustration turns to confusion, which exhausts him more than anything else.

He's about ready to give up and force cotton balls into his ears before snoozing when the cat paws at its bowl.

...No way. Sunny can't believe that this cat is proper and polite enough to only eat food in a bowl after waking him up repeatedly.

He decides going with it is easier than being confused, and makes his way to the kibble. Oh. There's a plastic scooper poking out of the bag. He didn't think to look inside of it. Sunny decidedly ignores the cat's judging stare as he grabs up the scooper and some food, dropping pieces all the way into the dining room.

As he crouches down and carefully pours into the bowl as much as will keep the cat away from him, it bonks and rubs its head against his hand, then nibbles on the kibble. The spot it rubbed feels a little oily. Gross. Sunny thinks to wash his hands of cat and kibble smell before sequestering into his room again.

\-----------------------------lolol-------------------------------

It's a day later, at the very least, before Sunny is bothered again by his very unwelcome revisitor. No headache forms from waking up this time, so Sunny decides to run with that by acquiescing before his mood worsens. He sighs and gets up to open his door.

The cat goes ahead towards the stairs, but Sunny blearily heads towards the bathroom. The door is barely cracked open when the cat sprints past him and shoves itself through the doorway - loose fur flying in a thin cloud around the crack.

Policing indeed, it seems. Sunny isn't even allowed to use the toilet for a few minutes. He follows in to kick the cat out (maybe literally), and looks around the floor. There's no cat. What? He looks towards the shelves, then the mirror - then beside that, to the toilet.

Oh my-ew. Ew.

Sunny hurriedly snatches Mewo from the toilet rim, interrupting its _drinking of toilet water,_ and sets it outside the bathroom. It zooms back in, straight for the toilet again, and Sunny thankfully catches it before it gets there. He tosses it close to the ground outside the bathroom and hurriedly slams the door.

Thoroughly grossed out, Sunny does his business while desperately trying to ignore the drawn-out meows begging for _toilet water._

He picks up the cat when he leaves - because blocking the way with his leg nearly had the cat climb him like a tree except he had no bark on his bare legs - and catches the doorknob with his elbow, pulling it shut. He sets the cat down, wiping the cat grease and fur on his shorts, and watches it. It stares at him like it did in the dining room. Sunny isn't even sure if it came to him this time for food or if it wanted toilet water this whole time, so he makes his way to where it sat at the stairs earlier.

It continues to sit there and stare at him. Sunny stares back. He's considering the lesser evil between suffering from the cat meowing at his doorway for hours and suffering from the idea of it drinking from the toilet he just used, when the cat finally stands and slowly makes its way past him.

Thank goodness. He follows the same way as before.

In the kitchen, Sunny scrapes the still-littered floor with the scooper and carelessly deposits it all into the food bowl in the dining room. The cat very quickly bonks his hand and rubs against it again, before he can pull away. It eats.

Frankly, because the Bathroom Incident was a horrifying experience, Sunny looks to the water bowl and finds it empty, so he picks it up to refill it. He tosses the scooper into the mess on the floor.

When he comes back, the cat isn't eating anymore, just staring at him again. The heap of kibble barely has a dent in it - actually, it looks like a bigger pile than the first time. He crouches and sets down the water bowl - gets bonked and rubbed again - and it drinks rapidly. As in, water is flying everywhere.

Wow. Sunny decidedly doesn't think about the implications of that.

Sunny attempts to stand up to wash his hands, but stops at a loud meow - louder since the cat is right in front of him. Not drinking. He stares at it. It stares at him. Sunny is aware of time being wasted, and tries to get up again.

It meows louder, stepping away from the bowls and towards him.

Sunny sits down, glaring at the cat. It comes closer, then rubs its head against his knee. It then pads to stand in front of the food bowl, closer to Sunny than the water bowl. It stares at the kibble.

...A moment passes. Sunny has no idea what's stopping it. The cat looks at him. He stays still. It comes up again, does the head rub thing again, stands in front of the bowl. Stares. Its tail twitches. What is going on.

When it tries to walk up again, Sunny pulls the bowl in front of his knee. It goes to his other knee. Both of them are starting to feel kind of gross, covered in grease and strings of fur, so he tries to gently direct its head towards the bowl.

The cat explodes in an earthquake's worth of purrs, gliding fully under his hand and digging straight into the food bowl. More fur than ever gets stuck to Sunny's hand, and he whips it away from the cat and flails it around, glad that the thing finally started eating and he can wash up.

He stands, and the purring halts immediately. So did the crunching. He looks down to find the cat once more staring at him. Ugh. No way.

Sunny crouches and pets it a second time, purrs returning full blast and the crunching resuming. He gets it now. It must've been spoiled. Sunny will have to sit here, petting a greasy, shedding cat until it eats and drinks everything or bear the pain of never sleeping again. He sits, resigned.

He pets it again whenever the purring starts to quiet, turning the volume straight to a ten with each stroke. This is an extremely unpleasant experience for him. Which seems odd to Sunny, because he doesn't remember petting cats as a particularly terrible pastime. He did so all the time with whatever friendly Faraway brand stray that would bounce up to him. Those cats were soft and squishy. This one feels like it has bumps - bones? Or knots? Sunny thought he remembered that cats with short fur could have knots. This one is also a lot thinner than all the chubby, overfed cats in town. The grease and loose fur don't even have to be mentioned.

Do cats need to be given baths? Sunny really didn't want to have the cat in the bathroom again. Or to wash the cat. He already barely puts forward the effort to take as many showers as he needs to.

He can just wash his hands afterward. What's adding a minute more to this ten-minute waste of time? Better than hours of meowing.

Sunny irritatedly scritches behind its ears. It seems to like it.

\------------------------------------------------lololol-------------------------------------------------

When Sunny next wakes up, it's to the smell of fast food dinner set out on his desk and a sticky note stuck in front of it. He picks up the note.

"Hi Sunny! It's mommy. I noticed you tried feeding the cat! Thank you for helping. Because I'm so busy, could you feed her when I'm gone, every morning and evening? :) Love you! P.S. The broom is in the front left of the closet."

When Sunny made his way into the kitchen, he found the cat waiting smugly at its bowl. He frowned at it. It was undeterred, and stared back. Feeling thoroughly as if he's somehow lost some sort of battle, Sunny scooped the kibble back into the bag with his hands, refilled the cat's bowls, and prepared to slave away as its personal cat masseuse for the next ten minutes and every day forward.

He's tired.


	2. Affection With A Tilde

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolutely hated whenever I present affection and tomfoolery with any tilde ending my sentence. I attribute this chapter to that.  
> Slight warning: Sunny doesn't know how to treat pets.

Something was wrong with the cat.

More specifically, Sunny had chores to do around the house. Being home most of the day, and with his mother so riddled with work, it was only natural that most - if not all - of the housework fell to him. As lethargic as Sunny was these days, he didn't have the stomach for confrontation nor did he feel particularly.. okay with pushing everything towards his mom, no matter how moody and tired he is. So he goes with it, at the cost of his craved sleeping time.

At least it took less time than his homeschooling. Sunny tries to saddle himself with about an hour's worth of chores a day, so as to avoid trying to stay awake for longer than five hours, just. Cleaning. And pinching himself near to the point of bruising to stay alert. Some weeks, however, he fails that consistency, and it leaves him with.. today. Cleaning Day.

Today, Sunny has a short list of chores to do: sweeping, mopping, dishes, dusting, window washing, cleaning his room, cleaning the bathroom, polishing anything wooden, mowing the front yard, vacuuming the carpets, taking out the trash, and setting out the laundry.

Short, he tells himself. It's short. It won't take long. Sunny really didn't want it to take long.

Therefore, something was wrong with the cat, because it didn't seem to understand how much Sunny loathed its presence while doing... everything.

When Sunny got up for the day - after sleeping as long as he could just to prepare for it - he found the cat sitting in front of his doorway, as was usual. Sunny had scooped twice the amount of kibble in the thing's bowl last night, hoping that even if he wasn't there to pet it, it would give him some reprieve for just the morning as he desperately slept in.

He's been indulging it for a week now, anyway. Sunny would say that having to wake up twice a day to feed it is the whole reason his sleep schedule is so out of wack that _Cleaning Day_ came back to torture him.

Sunny makes his way to the dining room - clingy cat tracing his every step - and slumps in relief at the sight of the empty food bowl. Sunny thinks he might try overfilling the bowl from now on, just to reduce the number of times he has to wake up, so he does that - extra and all - and pets the rumbling cat until it stops eating.

Then he gets to work on the closest chore to him: sweeping. The Swiffer Sweeper and dustpan are hidden behind one of the tall plants in the dining room, set there so Sunny's mother wouldn't take it and put it away somewhere. He never could find it on his own when she does that, despite lazily looking almost all throughout the house. He grabs them and sets off for a long day.

This is where the cat follows after Sunny for no reason at all other than to make his day drag even longer than he can already barely stand it to be.

The cat mostly stayed away while Sunny was sweeping, keeping a fair distance away from the scuffing of the broom and his feet, yet following him closely whenever he switched rooms. Sunny paid very little mind to this, and otherwise would ignore it for the rest of his chores, if not for his bubble being invaded as closely as the annoying thing could manage.

The cat was with Sunny for dishes. Fur fouled his dishwater and stuck to the drying plates and bowls, and he felt stinging claw marks from when the cat climbed and swayed on his shoulders to watch him wash from above. It kept climbing him even when he set it down, so his back ached from hunching over to accommodate it. Flicking it with water only got him clawed more as it freaked out on his shoulders. Usually Sunny didn't have that many dishes to do, often quickly snacking on whatever the cabinets held or eating fast food his mom brings home, but they absolutely seem to stack up after the third-or-so rewash.

The cat was with Sunny for dusting. It took thrice as long with the cat jumping onto whatever low shelves it could, just to rub oil and fur on him, and it refused to move when batted with the flimsy feather duster - rather, he ended up needing to throw it away for how torn up it got from being played with.

The cat was with Sunny for window washing. Freshly polished glass would be slathered with oil and stuck with fur as the thing climbed the window frame and shoved itself between him and the glass. Fresh claw marks now exist on his sides too from being scaled from a lower height.

The cat was with Sunny for wood polishing. It now climbed his back as he hunched over to wipe the wooden cabinets with polish-soaked rags. More scratches. More fur stuck to his clothes. More fur stuck to the still-wet wood that the cat jumps onto, only to jump back to Sunny's shoulders.

The cat was with Sunny for cleaning his room. Even the clean clothes he found littering the ground ended up needing to be thrown into the wash basket, what with the cat rolling over nearly every article of clothing behind his back as he reorganized his things. He nearly threw out everything in his bottom drawer after finding the vermin stretching out in it.

The cat was with Sunny for vacuuming, believe it or not. He thought he could scare it away with the noise, or at least have it keep its distance like with the broom, but instead it became some horrid mix of the two that somehow made everything worse. It kept dashing back and forth, jumping on top of the couch and shelves, fur and tchotchkes flying in its wake. And yet, _for some reason_ , it kept dashing towards Sunny and the vacuum, tripping him up between his legs, and fleeing somewhere random only to dash back again. _Just run. Just go somewhere else. It's a big house, you stupid cat, leave Sunny alone._

Sunny struggles not to shove the cat into the trash bag he was currently tying up. He throws his most threatening glare towards the thing, sitting on the counter beside him, wiggling on its haunches. He could leave it outside the front door, filth and filth finally shunned away from here. No more cat. No more gross fur and oil. No more scratches that were surely getting infected. It could get crushed in the trash compactor for all he cared.

...Sunny felt a twinge in his conscience. Maybe that was too mean. That was definitely too dark of an image.

Or not! he decides, as the thing jumps three feet into the air and _latches onto his shoulder,_ using his _very barren arm_ as leverage to climb atop him.

Sunny resists the urge to scream, tearing open the freshly tied trash bag in his fists.

\-------------------------------------lmao--------------------------------

In the end, the house looked cleaner.

But only until you saw up close.

Fur marred literally everything. Actually, Sunny was pretty sure when he'd swept the whole house earlier, there wasn't nearly as much fur as he could find now - all the fluff to ever exist being situated in a few select corners and dark areas of the home. Now it looked like Sunny needed to not just sweep twice, but to do everything all over again.

And yet Sunny was sure that if he collected all the fur in the house it would in no way reach the sheer amount of fuzz sticking to himself. Tarred and furred from head to toe - his ears and nose itch from the strands filling and tickling them - Sunny feels pitch dark anger at the pest that caused all of this, twirling figure-eights around his legs as he mourns the lost sleep surely necessary to fix the mess in front of him.

He already feels the effects of staying awake so long wearing on his patience, and with every brush of fur against his fuzzy (not originally fuzzy) socks, his restraint chips away faster than ever.

The cat meows.

Why, this time, does it need him?

...Actually, Sunny feels he needs something from it. Revenge. An end to fur and oil.

Sunny scoops the cat up roughly, marginally satisfied in temporarily interrupting its obstinate noise-making, grabs something from the kitchen, and stomps over to the stairs. He has to put the thing down to grip the railing, but he finds himself making it quickly to the top of the stairs. Seems his anger gave him a boost of focus and energy. The cat pads behind him, unaware of his dark mood.

Stupid cat. It'll regret being so careless.

Sunny stops at the bathroom. He really didn't want to let the cat in there after last time. He'd been zipping in and out the bathroom as quickly as possible just to keep it away from the toilet.

But, this is going to be a mess. He prefers the liquid-proof bathroom tiles over wood flooring.

Sunny zips inside and slams the door shut anyway, setting a few heavy knick-knacks on top of the closed toilet lid, before returning and opening the door fully.

The cat sits there patiently, this time. Sunny waits. Thinks to move out of the way a bit, so the cat won't brush against him again. It sits there some more.

...uh. Does it know the toilet is blocked? Sunny picks up the cat, impatient, and elbows the door shut behind him. Unceremoniously, he drops the cat into the tub. It sniffs around, unaware of what's happening.

Sunny goes into the cabinets and gathers some towels and rags. He takes a moment to stare wide-eyed at the electric shaver sitting behind the stack he took out, thoughtful. He decides that's probably a bad idea.

Sunny sets some of the towels around the tub the cat foolishly hadn't left yet. There's no drain on the ground. He also sets some towels around the rim of the basin, ready to pick up and restrain the thing if it tries to escape.

Then, Sunny takes out what he'd brought from the kitchen. Small enough to fit in his back pocket as he climbed the stairs and set about the bathroom.

Cats could be washed with Dawn soap, right? The same stuff ducklings are okay with? What does Sunny care.

Sunny flips off the drain switch and pours some soap into the tub, nearest to the water spout. Then, he turns on the water. Full blast.

Instantly, the cat scrabbles out of the bathtub - pulling the rim's towels into the water and soaking them - and sprints to the closed door, then to the toilet. Sunny irritatedly (and definitely smugly) observes its fluffed-up tail poking from between the toilet and the wall.

Revenge.

He grabs one of the sopping wet towels from the tub, not even bothering to wring it out, and walks slowly towards the cat until he can see it peering from its small hiding place. Sunny had never seen its eyes so wide.

He feels a little bad. Sunny reconsiders going to get a dry towel. But, Sunny's numerous scratches have dulled his sympathy, and he knows the cat is going to be cold and wet by the end of this. So he lunges at it.

It tries to get away, but Sunny roughly grabs its lower half and throws himself on the ground after it, and it lets out a loud (sad, pitiful; his heart twinged) meow as he drags Mewo towards him and hurriedly wraps the rest of it in a towel.

Mewo mewls again as Sunny gets up and makes his way to the roaring tub. He tries not to remember how trusting it was when he'd set it in there earlier.

He almost put the cat in the water - towel and all - but stops when he feels the _heat_ emanating from the surface. He secures the cat in one arm, stopping the waterflow with the water level sitting at maybe an inch, and feels the temperature with his hand.

He yanks it out immediately, nearly dropping the cat in his haste. Wow! That was way too hot! Sunny supposes the cat had good reason to run away, if it felt the heat coming from the waterfall. He decides not to feel bad about that, since he'll change the temperature back anyway.

His mood still feels sour though. Sunny thought he would feel better by giving the cat what it deserved. Ugh.

Sunny, not wanting to have to wrestle the cat again, set about evening out the water temperature using both knobs and one hand. He felt Mewo hide its head in his arm and could feel it shaking through the towel. Sunny decides to fill the tub up so it will mostly cover it and keep it warm, and he puts the temperature at one he thinks feels nice enough.

After the water is off, now comes the tricky part of lowering the cat into the water. It shakes twice as hard when he removes the bundle of towel and fur from his arm, and he feels too how cold his now-wet side quickly becomes. He wanted to set it in there quickly, but doesn't want to deal with it freaking out, so he does so slowly.

And.. it does struggle. Sunny wasn't sure submerging it slowly helped at all. But once it was in the water, he unwraps the towel from below it so it can stand without his support. Standing straight up in the water, all that isn't submerged is its back and head. It weakly tries pushing against his hands to leave the bath, mewling plaintively, wide eyes imploring for reprieve. It looks smaller than ever before, fur clinging to the shape of its uncomfortably arched spine and tensely hunched shoulders.

...Sunny kind of wants to abandon this endeavor. How does he even wash a cat? Is it like washing his hair, scrubbing his scalp? He can't really put more soap onto the towel or his hands, since letting go of the cat would have it leave a giant, wet mess all throughout the bathroom.

Sunny grimaces and goes about scrubbing the cat's back and sides with his hands. Fur permeates the soapy water, maybe thrice or more as dense as what he had to suffer with while doing dishes. Despite being stroked more than Sunny had ever put forward for the cat, there is no purring. Mewo's eyes merely narrow in misery, and it lets out the quietest, most heart-wrenching mew Sunny had ever heard from it, even compared to when he'd ignored it for hours outside his doorway.

It struggles less as he goes along, enough for Sunny to back away and come back with more soap. He tries to be careful around its eyes, but must've messed up since it tried to scrabble out of the tub again. More sad mewls he never wanted to hear again, for more than one reason. A _lot_ of fur filling the water. And when Sunny thinks the water isn't getting any inkier with hundreds of strands, he flips the plug and pulls Mewo out into a towel.

It's shivering again, curling up in the already-soaked cloth. He sets it down on one of the floor towels - all surprisingly dry despite Sunny's initial mishap with the cat - and rubs the cat dry roughly. Then, when it tries to pull away, he goes about more gently, until it's only damp. He tries again with one of the floor towels. Still damp. Still shaking. Sunny frowns and swaddles the cat in two layers of towels. Still shuddering through the fabric.

So, Sunny sits back against the wall, on the uncleaned bathroom floor with his cat-soiled clothing, and huddles the cat up to him.

He's tired anyway, he figures. It was a long day of chores and dealing with the pesky little creature cuddling in his arms. Sunny supposes since he's basically added "wash the cat" to his list of chores, he could be forgiven for taking a break and pushing a few others off for.. tomorrow?

Ugh, Sunny doesn't think he can stay awake so long for two days in a row.

Especially now, warm and cold and resting after standing and walking for so long. He thinks he could sleep a whole two days in a row. An.. entire 13 hours, plus some. He's.. pretty sure? ..that he's slept 13 hours... before...

Sunny sluggishly shifts to rest his dry side against the cold wall, relishing in the cold relief of his scratches, pulling his legs in, and lightly bunching the warm ball of fur and soft towels between them and his chest.

...Maybe he could sleep like this. ...Just for Mewo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where is the litterbox? Why wasn't that a chore? The world may never know. Or it will. In another chapter, surely.
> 
> It's not recommended to use Dawn to wash your pets on the regular. Definitely get them some pet wash. And _certainly_ do not be so rough like Sunny. And if you have to fill the tub with water, don't fill so much that it covers the cat. And make sure it's lukewarm, because even pleasantly hot water for a human sucks for a cat. Actually, just look up how to wash your pets. With cats, it's not really necessary to wash them that often or even at all [except for certain breeds] but Mewo was in a state where she was too hungry and tired to have the energy to wash herself. Just. Don't have pets if you can't make a habit of feeding and watering them. Don't get a breed that sheds a lot and/or needs to be brushed if you can't make a habit of that either. Sunny could've avoided this if he'd helped take care of Mewo from the beginning, or if Mewo was given to someone more capable like he wanted. That's no excuse for bad caretaking though.
> 
> P.S. I don't think of Sunny as this mean. But anyone would be mean if they're worn out and saddled with a responsibility they don't want.
> 
> I'm open to criticism and ideas! If you comment anything, I might not comment back, but I do appreciate whatever you say >w< perhaps too much, which is why i get so flustered thinking of something to say back. Thanks aren't nearly enough lol so I'll just post another chapter


	3. Thank You, Bad Fashion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This chapter took so long because I was working on a [Sunny plushie](https://iknowicanbutwhy.tumblr.com/post/643310461765484544/human-doll-humanoid-pdf-plush-pattern) and was a little bummed out by the lack of attention for it compared to a meme I drew. But then a very intelligent, tumblr-savvy friend reminded me that memes naturally get more attention than anything else, so now I feel better. :) That's a lesson in forcing myself to do everything all at once at the expense of my wellbeing I guess. Don't push yourself too hard for internet fame!! Do things because you love them and only a little bit because others do too!!!

Sunny doesn't quite remember how his interactions used to go with the cat.

It appeared on his birthday as a kitten, tiny and cute, but it wasn't his pet. Not really. However, that's only part of the reason he'd kept from interacting with it. Sunny had been compared to a cat before, but that didn't mean he liked them very much; they aren't lively like Aubrey and Kel, or friendly like Basil and Hero. His only experiences with them were of the strays around town, all of which seemed friendly and cute superficially, but would only grace you with a lasting presence whenever you had food, and only when you had food. Even then, you practically have to pay $10 every five minutes to keep them there - and that's when you feed them with fish, their _favorite._ They're spoiled by the overabundance of attention they get from the sheer plethora of cat lovers in town, always willing to give a little.

So yeah, Sunny's not a big fan of cats, who stayed with him the most only because he happened to have a generous allowance unlike a lot of other kids.

This particular cat was a lot younger, cautionary, and hasn't run away in the last 10 minutes without food to vacuum into its endless pit of a stomach. Sunny could've had it in his mind that this kitten is more impressionable and perhaps has some hope for a future of not being a greedy, selfish creature, but it wasn't his pet. So, while everyone fawned over it, doubtlessly spoiling it into a life of egocentricity, Sunny hid in his giant box that he got for his birthday.

Nothing else. Just the box. The rest doesn't matter. He'd emulate Spongebob, his greatest inspiration, in his box of imagination.

Unfortunately, before Sunny could properly zone out and live his greatest fantasy side-by-side with his Master of Delusions, he flinched in surprise at the light pricking of tiny claws latching onto his shoulder. Sunny stiffly swiveled his head.

One moment there was no cat. The next, there was a small kitten struggling to balance on its perch beside his ear, looking very much like it hadn't intended on being there. Seems an encounter was inevitable.

"Same eyes," said a giggle.

Sunny, curious, gently removed the swaying critter, and cradled it in his arms as he observed its face. Rather than being upset at moving so much, it began to sing a high-pitch purr.

A tolerant cat. Sunny never thought he'd see the day one existed. Though he doesn't really see how he looks like a kitten, and he'd feel a little offended if he didn't know she loved the miniature engine. It was incredibly loud for something so bitty.

Sunny found it kind of hard not to fall asleep to that happy rumble, in his comfortable imagination box. He closed his eyes to the blurry scene in front of him.

"Knew you would like each other," said a smirk.

Sunny turned towards the voice and opened his eyes to see-

-to squint at the blindingly white bathroom tiles.

Ah. Yes. The bathroom. Which he took a nap in. And if he remembers correctly, he hasn't cleaned it yet. Gross.

Sunny shifts against the wall he'd been leaning against. His neck aches, begging to be popped yet screaming at any movement that could come close to snapping. His legs are terrifyingly numb, but he knows if he tries to move them they'll send fiery static racing all throughout his limbs for ten long minutes at least. But worst of all are the stinging cuts plaguing his entire being with endless needles and knives.

He should really tend to those before they get infected.

Sunny feels something past all the discomfort, however, and pauses before getting up. His chest is shuddering. Did he get cold from sleeping on the tile?

But no, his chest is rather warm in a kinesthetically discouraging way. That is, he doesn't want to get up. Because there's a purring, very heated, blanket-wrapped pillow on his chest in the form of a cat.

Right. He'd been worn out and warming the freezing feline. He wouldn't have slept here otherwise. Sunny has high standards for his sleeping areas, after all; he's still not sure how he managed to sleep in as uncomfortably bright and cold of a place as the bathroom.

Just to make sure the purring isn't some extreme form of shivering, Sunny reaches into the towel around the cat's head to check the dampness of its fur. The purring increases tenfold. It feels pretty dry, and since Sunny feels he doesn't owe the cat an extraneous petting session, he deposits it on the ground beside him. It responds with a befuddled _murrh?_ and rolls around in the towel still loosely wrapped around it.

Sunny agrees and shivers, shocked with cold, but the searing of his countless scratches combats that pretty evenly, and he feels no pity for the feline. He reluctantly shakes feeling back into his legs, biting his lip at the surge of electricity flowing through every neuron.

Once Sunny felt stable enough for his knees to keep from throwing him to the floor, he pushed himself up on the wall and wobbled his way to the sink nearest the shelves, pulling out the antiseptic and cotton balls.

Sunny never really treated his wounds himself before, but he supposes it's not too difficult to understand. He shimmies out of his freezing shirt, pours entirely too much medical alcohol onto a single cotton ball (oops), and proceeds to clean all of his cuts.

ow. ow OW. wo. ow.

The cat jumps onto the counter and immediately sits down, and Sunny's sure it's just to watch him struggle. He glares. Mutual vengeance, it seems, for last night. That's not even fair, since it caused these wounds _before_ the bath. He huffs and returns to his task, ignoring the thing.

When Sunny finishes suffering for the sake of good health, he belatedly reaches over for the box of bandaids. He wonders if he perhaps should use the roll of bandages, but he'd always used bandaids for small cuts. So, like the very intelligent, resourceful 12-year-old boy he is, Sunny procures a bandaid for every single cut on his person. Small cuts, big ones, shallow and not-quite-shallow, and for the long scratches he used multiple. Sunny stares in the mirror afterward.

..He's just a tad disappointed the bandaids weren't rainbow. At least then his stupidity would've looked deliberate.

Speaking of: his back stings. Right. Half of the cat's army of scratches are camped out back there. Where he can't reach.

And there are still scratches on his legs, too.

There's no way he's taking off his pants. Sunny doesn't like putting back on soiled clothes. He also doesn't like walking around the house in just boxers, despite nobody being home - it's bad enough he has to race the short distance towards his room without a shirt. He also doesn't feel like he can walk far on his still rather shaky legs, let alone run.

So, basically, he needs to wait here a bit longer. Sunny sighs loudly through his nose and faceplants between the two sink basins, crossing his arms around his head to support him while his legs dangle off the side, toes brushing the ground. Sunny hates wasting time when he could be sleeping.

...Which, strangely enough, Sunny isn't as tired as he thought he would be.

He shifts his head towards where he'd been sleeping earlier, only to find the cat sitting in exactly the same spot on the sink, blocking his view.

Sunny springs to standing immediately, halting any possible advances towards jumping on his shoulders.

In response, it sits in the exact same position as before, cordially and slowly blinking its eyes.

Cordially. Or perhaps respectfully. Did it really learn to leave his shoulders alone, to stop mounting him like its own personal steed for it to whip and claw? Sunny very suddenly doesn't feel bad for that bath at all. Very, one hundred percent apathetic and completely planning on using baths to get what he wants from the cat from here on-

He tenses as the cat fearlessly rises and saunters over to him, lightly butting its head against his defensively raised hand and sniffing his wounds from a distance.

He's just too smelly from antisceptic to jump on top of. He gets it. Mngh, disappointing.

Sunny observes the cat, having nothing else to do. Honestly, he'd expected it to want to avoid him. Stand by the door probably, and cry at him until he tripped his way over to open it, after which it'd run away. Sunny thinks he feels whatever (anxiety?) annoyance he had grow from the idea drain away the more Mewo sniffs around him at the sink.

And up close, he can definitely see that its fur seems.. darker? More of a proper, soft black than the smoky version he last remembered. It's a lot prettier, Sunny thinks, reaching out to stroke it. Mewo purrs happily. It doesn't feel oily. Sunny smiles, just a small bit. Maybe he did a good thing here, and it appreciates him for it?

Okay.

That kinda makes Sunny feel good, despite all the trouble.

\-----------------------------------------rofl--------------------------------------------

Sunny, currently redressed, even more bandaidified than before, still fully awake, and now noticeably hungry, exits the bathroom and makes his way through the stairs when his legs are absolutely stable. He heads straight to the kitchen, cat in tow. He digs through the cabinets, keeping a wary eye on the devil cat watching intently from the counter, shoulders feeling very much targeted. Respect or not, he recognizes that look in its eyes, the look that says "I'm going to ravage your shoulderblades." He finds a cold can of corn and decidedly eats it raw, unwilling to use the fluffy, 'clean' dishes and unsure if aluminum is microwave safe. He opens the can without looking at it, keeping watch on the cat instead, and thinks while he chews, despondently contemplating the dishes and all the other failed chores he needs to do.

Sunny isn't particularly happy with the concept of recleaning _everything_ in the house, but he has so much energy right now. If he were to try and sleep, he'd sit in bed for an hour of wakefulness and darkness at least. And he definitely will not have so much energy the next time he wakes up after a 13-hour rest. _And_ leaving his chores for later is dangerous anyway.

So, Sunny grouses and bites his spoon that he forgot to rerinse, he should do it all now. But - and he squints his eyes at the cat to ask it this silent question - how will he keep that thing from bothering him?

Spray it with a water bottle? It'd be fine if he repurposed one of the bleach bottles, so long as he rinsed it out, right? However, he admittedly still feels uncomfortable with what he did earlier in the bathroom. Lock it up? He doesn't want to deal with it meowing for hours on end, made to feel even longer than when he was half asleep and _not_ doing something he hates.

It would be incredibly nice of it if it just, you know. Generously decided to do Sunny this one favor, for making its fur pretty and tolerable, a favor that includes: leaving him alone for a while.

And yet the cat remains attached to him by the foot, or shoulder when it so pleases. Is it bored? It could go hunt some mice. There are mice here, right? He's not even giving it food, _what does it want?_

Sigh. It wants to be shoulder level with him. Fine. He'll make it easier on the both of them. Sunny goes to his room, the cat following of course.

He digs into the deepest recesses of his clothes drawers, barely halfway sure he knows where he's looking, and only after pulling out all the clothes in the very back of his shirt drawer does he find and snatch a gaudy purple hoodie. Completely unlike anything else he has to wear. The color is incredibly hard to look at, but he's thankful it's not yellow or orange. The front has a generic game controller pasted onto it, the words "PLAYER TWO" printed in bold 8-bit font above it. The most important feature of this hoodie, however, was the hood.

Sunny slips the hoodie on, pops out the hood, and picks up the wiggling cat before it jumps into his open drawer. Then he carefully places it behind his head into the makeshift cloth basket.

Of course, as soon as he lets go, claws prick through to the back of his neck and Sunny instantly regrets his decision, fearing he'll never unlatch the cat from its perch. He freezes in place, not wanting to aggravate the terror he is currently at the mercy of, and panicks for a moment.

crap. Oh crap. ow. Oh no, okay, what if he just. Lays on the ground, but then he'd have to move oh no-

Then, the claws retract, and Sunny stands there, shook. He doesn't want to shift lest the tiny knives return. Of course, his back is starting to ache a bit from his defensively hunched position, so he stands up a little straighter. No claws. He turns in a slow circle. Nothing. Walks around, turns a little quicker, crouches and stands. Still okay.

If Sunny was energetic before, he's ecstatic now. No clawing! No pain! No irksome cat interrupting his field of vision!

Sunny would do a little jump but he's not willing to test his luck even more.

So here's the plan, Sunny thinks to himself, pacing around his room, cat bouncing in its carriage:

1) This is now the Cleaning Hoodie. He's not incredibly worried about getting cat hair on it, since he never wears it anyway. Sunny doesn't have a particular style of clothing that he likes, since his mom is the one who always chooses from the store what he should wear, but he's.. not one for hoodies. Not used to bright colors. Not on himself, anyway. He's going to use this hoodie whenever he cleans from now on.

2) Sunny's going to clean now that he's unhindered and raring to go. He has no idea why he's so excited to clean. Must be because he feels like he's won something, leveled up somehow.

Sunny lets the beautiful bells of achievement ring victory in the back of his mind.

Motivated, he promptly starts by doing all of his upstairs chores first.

As Sunny mills about, he notices the lack of light shining through any of the windows. It's dark out. This makes him a _little_ concerned about his mother coming home so late while the lights are still on. Sunny always sleeps into the day, but as far as she knows, he only happens to be taking a small nap whenever she gets back and it's still light out. As long as he gets his work done, he can sleep during the day. He still has a curfew to adhere to, however. Sunny doesn't want his mother to be upset at him, but he figures he can better explain himself cleaning so late into the night over seeming to have not cleaned at all for a whole month.

Sunny remembers why he shouldn't be happy with the weight strapped behind his shoulders.

And yet.. he does find it to be a bit pleasant. Like a comforting, warm hand guiding his movements and pushing him along, motivating him to keep going. The light pressure feels nice on the cuts littering his back. And when Mewo pokes its head over his shoulder, it's soft, and simply put, he likes that. It seems content with the whole arrangement, too.

It's a lot easier now for Sunny to retreat into his daydream headspace while mindlessly doing chores. He daydreams of the cat, for lack of inspiration he supposes, and envisions it battling and protecting the house against the Demons of The Toilet, Mewo transforming to have golden fur in place of magically-appearing golden armor. Too many details to focus on mentally designing something like that. Honestly, it's a really stupid daydream, but it passes the time, and Sunny needs to rationalize the Bathroom Incident in an innocent light somehow.

Time goes by quicker when daydreaming than usual with the tiny blanket on his back. Dream Mewo The Bold rakes its golden claws in an arc as wide as every window wipe, hisses in maximum intimidation with every swipe of the broom, and polishes its mighty arsenal of weapons in tandem with Sunny scrubbing the whole bathroom. And with every short meow from his shoulder, Sunny feels as if he's been bestowed the power and legacy of the great golden fur of his master and predecessor, whom of which will watch over him and endow him with wisdom until its last dying breath.

So maybe Sunny stole that last storyline from somewhere, it's fine. He can't be copyrighted in his own head. Probably.

...Still, despite all that, Sunny harbors a bit of grudge for giving this cat a free ride. It never even paid for tickets; it practically threatened the bus driver for a joyride!

It'll just have to deal with it if Sunny takes it out of his hood just to travel the stairs.

\--------------------------------------rofd-------------------------------------

When Sunny returns to his room and takes the hoodie off - having left the cat behind outside his closed door - he notices no fur marring the hood. He's a little shocked. He remembers the cat shedding a lot before. Before the bath? Was all of that really just accumulated old fur? Sunny isn't sure so much loose fur is normal for cats, not all at once. It's also not even Summer, or hot enough to shed like that.

Whatever. Sunny tosses the unsoiled hoodie on the floor he just cleaned and flops perpendicular on his bed. If he has to give the cat another bath next month, he's not exactly happy about it, but what can he do? Sunny almost considers letting it run away outside, but something in his chest pinches at that thought before it emerges. It's such a needy thing anyway, it wouldn't survive a moment outside. All the chubbier cats would bully it, take its food and probably leave it scrawnier than it already is. All it would do is cry.

And he surmises Mewo would be missed. He's not sure by who, but he has a feeling, and it's keeping him from thinking any further on it.

He turns on his back to warm the cold spot between his shoulders.

Sunny shifts around to lay properly on the bed, sheets covering him and pillow behind his head, and closes his eyes to sleep. He's done thinking. Finally, he can just sleep.

...

........

...Sunny opens his eyes without meaning to. He closes them again, and shifts the blankets a little higher over his shoulders.

Tries coming up with something to dream, despite usually not having to.

Picks mindlessly at his bandaids.

...Time passes.

It's when Sunny gives in and starts to wonder what the heck is wrong with him that he witnesses the loudest, longest meow he's ever heard from his door. It takes only a second of shock before he realizes something is very concerning about that.

Sunny jumps out of bed with a damnable amount of energy and rushes to open the door.

There, sitting very calmly and in no way looking as distressed as it sounded, is the cat.

Sunny slams the door immediately, firmly holding the doorknob in place. It's still dark out and therefore not feeding time. Actually, if he remembers, he fed the thing extra. Feels like forever ago when he did that, but that's beside the point. He owes nothing to the cat at this point.

A loud meow, barely muffled behind the door. Sunny knocks his forehead against it and closes his eyes. Meow. He doesn't feel any more sleepy by it. _Myeerrrhh._

Sunny huffs a bit amusedly at that one. Or maybe that was a chuckle of defeat.

He opens the door dismally, following the cat with a miserable (and they say depression makes you tired) glower as it pads inside and stands beside him, looking up at him as if waiting for something.

Here's your show, cat. Sunny flops dramatically onto the bed and decidedly stays there. No covers, perpendicular, and with his legs hanging off the side, since he's supposedly not sleeping anyway.

Sunny expects more meowing, grimacing to himself, but after a few moments of getting nothing, he relaxes.

Then he feels his heart nearly escape out his throat - literally, that was what it felt like, and it _hurt_ \- when he felt four light paws appear on his back.

Oh. Is it going to sit there? Sunny doesn't favor the idea of being a seat cushion, even for a cat.

Then he feels a paw stab into his shoulder, and _reach back while gripping it with its claws._

Sunny definitely does not like that! He reaches behind him, snatches the sadistic rat, and tosses it in front of him. It lands on his pillow, and he rolls to face the thing, lifting his legs on the bed and crossing his arms in front of himself, ready to deflect it if it tries to jump on him again.

He throws his scariest glare at the vile creature. It responds by ignoring him completely, focusing instead on pulling and pushing at the pillow beneath it.

...oh. That's kneading. Sunny forgot that's a thing cats do. He relaxes a bit, lowering his arms. He thinks he remembers they do that when they're happy. It's currently purring, too, so yeah.

Does it not know how much those claws hurt?? That thing's happiness does _not_ mean it has any right to make Sunny distressed. Honestly, though, he should've expected something like this compared to every other crime it's committed. He frowns, watching its paws with bored interest.

It's a little mesmerizing, actually. Even in the darkness of his room, Sunny can see the cat pretty clearly, like a void in the shadows. Or vantablack. Like a reverse nightlight, it makes the whole room seem a little brighter than the haunting pitch it was before, and Sunny relaxes even more at this observation.

The cat settles down, lying on its side, paws outstretched to Sunny.

Toe beans. He remembers that feline term too. Everyone coos about them, though Sunny thinks they look weird and uncomfortable, like callouses on your feet.

He reaches out to touch them, and the cat pulls its paw back. He tries snatching it again, and it tucks it under itself. Sunny smiles maliciously a small bit. He's annoying the cat, just like it does him. He snatches the other outstretched paw quickly, holding onto it as it struggles to pull away. Then, when it gives up (ha), he pushes lightly at the beans.

Claws out. Claws in. Sunny's eyes widen in a childish wonder he hasn't felt in a while. How do the claws hide so well? He feels the top of the paw curiously, and is pleasantly surprised by how _silky_ it is. The cat tries to pull away again, and Sunny holds fast tightly. He thinks the cat is being greedy and hypocritical for it to not accept pets on its super soft paw. Ultra-soft. Very plush. Not even Sunny's old stuffed animals compare to the softness of this paw.

Sunny is too entranced to catch the cat before it nips him lightly and he yanks his hand away, affronted. The cat steals its paw back and hides it with the other.

It's still purring. Such a weird cat, Sunny thinks. He's bullying it and it seems to love it. He huffs a quiet laugh and reaches for the cat's untucked back paws.

It stands up at that, walking to the edge of the bed, purring muted. It looks ready to hop off.

Wait.

Wait, no, come back!

Sunny grabs Mewo right before it leans off the bed, hurriedly trapping it to his chest, arms encasing it, pulling his legs in to trap it even more. When it wiggles unhappily, Sunny panics a bit and starts rapid-fire petting it, scratching behind its ears, avoiding its paws - absolutely unyielding yet desperately subservient all at once.

Mewo's obviously less appreciative of the attention than usual, but eventually, when Sunny's petting slows with exhaustion and both are warmer from cuddling, it settles down and resumes a low rumble.

Sunny isn't sure if he's tired out from the spontaneously frenzied exchange, or from the comfortably purring heater huddled up against him, but he finds it all too easy to close his eyes. Sideways on the bed, no comforter to cover him, a little too curled up - and Sunny thinks he can sleep soundly.

He doesn't think about how just a moment earlier, he couldn't sleep a wink.

And in his dreams, he listens to a kind smile.

"Now you'll have someone to keep you company when I'm not here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mewo, 4 hours later: MEOW. MEOW. MEOW. MEOW-  
> Sunny, internally: _**intense screaming**_
> 
> also I'm basing Sunny's shyness for not wearing a shirt off of my tiny brother. My brother also wears socks all the time, even inside the house without shoes, like a dork. Sunny does it as Omori! C'mon guys this is the facts.


	4. Just A Little Closer To The Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW this chapter had me thinking a lot about future chapters!  
> EDIT: it has come to my attention that Omori perhaps takes place around year 2000 (wow) and the game systems ive chosen to use in this fic are.. entirely too new. SO I'm gonna work on that. Please feel free to call me out on any misinformation on consoles; i only know the newest ones.

A month and a half later, and Sunny has to admit that he's developed a bit of a routine with Mewo.

Every day, he ends up staying awake for an hour or so longer than usual just because of the cat. Feeding it takes a lot longer than Sunny thinks should be necessary (which he does have to do it twice a day still, despite what happened that one time), but comparatively, he ends up spending a lot more time doing his four - now five-plus - hours of homeschool work while being forced to indulge the needy annoyance.

Sitting at his desk and half on top of the papers he's trying to write on, it just loves to chew on his pencil eraser as it waggles while he writes, making his penmanship impossible to translate for even himself. Whenever he turns a page in the textbook, it pounces and attacks like homeschool work is something evil - which, Sunny can respect the cat for that ideology, considering struggling to stay awake while studying is torture, but at least he has self-control. Whenever he tried to take his paper from beneath the cat (definitely pulling the paper rug from under it to scare it off the table and _not_ just to be mean), it shredded, and he had to start over.

Frankly, considering he couldn't understand what he'd written whatsoever, he wasn't too upset in losing the paper. Everything beforehand, however: irksome.

Sunny found a compromise in letting the cat lay on his lap. Unfortunately, this forced him to correct his posture on the seat - rather than writing with his head comfortably lying on the table, eyes focused near directly under his chin - and while he can admit that he's a lot more awake this way, it's. Still torture. The only real solution to doing homeschool work effectively is for there to be no homeschool work, so the cat isn't doing him any favors.

Especially since it's warm and purring. This doesn't quite make Sunny sleepy because he needs to focus on shakily holding his legs together and stiff to keep a stable base beneath Mewo, and he's feeling a little numb where he's sitting, but it _would_ make him tired otherwise and he's not about to thank the cat for making him uncomfortable enough to stay awake.

Of course, their truce lasts no significant amount of time, and Sunny is periodically forced to give attention to the thing he babysits with almost all the reluctance in the world. Almost, because as much as focusing on his work is a rarity and a necessity, he values the breaks.

He doesn't like playfighting with it, and he ascribes that to its painful claws of which he hasn't found a clipper for yet (his mom hasn't noticed they need more bandaids, so he wouldn't be able to cover his wounds anyway). Thankfully, it seems content with the unsharpened pencil he picked just for playing - longer and safer for him than his sharpened one - of which he waves in circles around it. Eventually, finally, it grows exhausted from the futile effort of trying to catch something a provoked, unsympathetic, mockingly uncooperative human of greater stature is keeping from its puny reach, and settles down within some overlooked amount of time. Of course, it remains like that until it stalwartly tries again sooner than later.

Sometimes Sunny takes a little longer playing than he needs or means to. Finds something else to twirl around, or plays a little more fairly. Anything's better than homeschool work, Sunny would pout behind his smirk, hands held under the cat's forelegs to help it dance.

(He may or may not have tried making it pose like Daydream Super Mewo. It didn't work, it _really_ didn't work, and he showered Mewo with pets for a stretch afterward when he felt bad.)

..And yet, despite all the distractions, Sunny finds himself finished early with all of his work for the last week of this routine. Overviewing his papers, comparing what he'd written to the printed curriculum, calculating how much time he'd studied after the learning work in preparation for his end-of-unit test next week - and Sunny realizes that he's pretty much finished for the month.

This happened last month actually, but he only had two free days. He has a whole _five days_ before Sunday of next month, when he takes his test and begins working on the new learning plan, to do.. anything. Not homeschool work.

What?

That's four (five plus) extra hours multiplied by five. Twenty hours. Of wakefulness, and Sunny doesn't think he can make himself sleep all that extra time so many days in a row.

He tragically realizes why he maybe shouldn't despise homeschool work, a.k.a. Having Something To Do.

Mewo meows inquiringly all the way across the room from where it's probably lounging on his bed. It's become a lot more.. less clingy, since Sunny hasn't entirely been pushing it away lately. He surmises it feels confident that he's wrapped around its little toe bean.

He was going to consider playing with it but feels that's too much like giving in to the Cat Manservant life. No thanks.

Therefore, Sunny turns to an old, bored hobby: gaming.

He actually hasn't gotten on one of his consoles or mini-systems in a while. There's a certain amount of effort that goes into poking buttons and remembering dialogue and _especially_ developing strategies. Sunny found it a lot easier to let his mind drift where it wanted to rather than force it to think of something creative.

And, for some reason, his games are a lot more boring recently. But he has nothing else to do.

Sunny shrugs at himself and decides to try playing them anyway. He plucks his purple hoodie from the ground and gets into it on automatic - since he rarely can survive without it when he's out of his room for more than ten minutes - and faces the cat.

...cat.. loaf. Kitten... bread. ...feline...... cloud. No legs. The cat has no legs.

That's absolutely adorable. Why is that adorable? Mewo is missing its legs.

..But, kitty ball.

Mewo has laid and sat in many ways; the Egyptian Sphynx, of which whenever he sees it Sunny can't help but stare and zone out while imagining the Great Pyramids of Mewo; the Crescent Kitty that almost makes him want to get another cat, this one white to complete the aesthetic; the Belly Bait 'n' Snare where you Should Not Scritch - all of which Sunny thought looked silly and could eventually turn away from.

This? This catulonimbus? This hemisfur? This biscat? Kitty potato?

This is too powerful.

Pet. Must pet. Can't not pet. Have to pet.

Wait! Sunny halts in his fatal mistake as the pseudo-owner and master of this creature, hand hovering millimeters above the sleepy shapeshifter, its eyes comfortably closed in sybaritic leisure. He's doing it again. Giving in to the adorableness of such a secretly vile, faux-sweet, tiny god of mischief and endless demands.

Don't do it. _Don't._

He does, and the fluffy potato dissolves with a _myarrph_ and a stretch. Sunny feels as if he's broken out of a trance. Thank goodness.

What was he even doing? Gaming. Right.

\------------------------------------pff--------------------------------------

Sunny has just two consoles - a Super NES and a Playstation - a Gameboy, and his old computer to choose from. He's currently in front of the TV of the common room, his ancient computer upstairs and already checked off the list. The most he can play on that old box is especially simple, repetetive games that mean nothing without another presence to make the stakes of winning and losing interesting.

The Playstation is already on for him to insert a disc. The cat lays on top of it. He's pretty sure it's doing the thing again, the thing which he is very intensely ignoring. He halfheartedly hopes his console doesn't overheat.

Sifting through his games, he starts by removing all of the purely multiplayer ones. Racing games of varying titles, party games, battle royales, cooperative puzzles, games that he remembers are only fun on multiplayer, etc... and he's left with a fifth of his stack. Then he halves that, throwing any old games he remembers playing too many times behind him. He checks through the titles for his Playstation just to find out all of the discs are scratched into utter unusability. He never did learn how to keep those safe, too used to cartridges. He tries turning on his Gameboy, but it needs batteries, and he has no idea where any are.

Sunny's left with a pitifully minuscule selection of cartriges for his SNES.

He.. could play Zelda, but he doesn't feel like being consciously creative in puzzle-solving, and he's not patient enough to painstakingly explore a bunch of puzzles he'll remember the answer to halfway through stumbling around.

...He has a few other story games, always easy to lose himself in. They're not nearly as fun to play again without commentary, however.

Sunny picks up Street Fighter from the multiplayer pile and sets it back down immediately. It may have singleplayer, but it's just a bit too intense, too competetive for fighting against a CPU.

DOOM? Why does he have this? He's a little too intimidated to try it alone. Also, how did his mother allow him to buy this? It can't be his.

Kel's probably. Or Aubrey's. Though, as interested as she is in graphics-heavy fighting games, she wouldn't just leave it here. It's more like Kel to try and convince Sunny to play it with him by having him 'conveniently' find it lying around.

Sunny sits there for a moment, hunched over the case lying innocently on his lap, staring straight through it.

He feels a dozen different things itch at the back of his mind, and Sunny takes his time nudging them beneath a white veil as bright as the light streaming from the glass sliding doors to his right.

Sunny decides to stand and head that way, the case falling to the ground, forgotten.

He doesn't look up. He looks down instead.

He closes his eyes to the white glare of the sun reflecting off of polished wood flooring.

It doesn't seem bright enough.

Right. He didn't clean the outside of the glass.

He never does.

The world nearly fades into a searing, distracting white canvas.

'Nearly' being the word of the day, since Sunny snaps out of his stupor at a quiet meow. Thoughtlessly, he turns around and makes his way back to the TV and consoles, shoving the mountain of multiplayer cases and cartridges further to the side and plucking some random singleplayer indie from its meager pile. He inserts the cartridge into his SNES.

The SNES, next to the bare Playstation, with no cat lying on it. Huh. Sunny distantly wonders where it is.

He glances around him dazedly. He doesn't notice any black smudges around him.

He does notice one very important thing. Sunny's eyes widen, mind sharpening and attention zeroing in on the open sliding door. Just how quiet was that noise Mewo made?

Sunny allows himself this one time to whisper the F word.

"Frick."

No time to lose - Sunny jumps to his feet, racing towards the open door and-

-and keeps his eyes trained to the ground an immediate five feet away from the backyard entrance.

Frick, indeed. He grips the doorframe tightly. He's not sure if he's keeping himself there or pushing himself away.

Sunny doesn't see Mewo in the near area. The grass is long and unkempt. Sunny should take his socks off before going outside but-

but he-

_mewo get back here you're so dead where are you oh my gosh_

Sunny panics and raises his center vision the slightest amount, now looking a whole ten feet away.

There! A black, still smudge in the right of his peripheral. He doesn't look up.

 _"Mewo!"_ Sunny tries yelling. It comes out about as loud as a tenor mouse, which isn't very loud, or reverberating.

Still, luckily, cats like mice, and this particular one likes messing with Sunny. He vaguely notices its ears perk up.

Yes, please, for once Sunny actually wants the cat to follow him. Inside. _Please. Just get in here!_

But Mewo doesn't move, or he thinks it doesn't. Why?! When he actually wants it to! He _knew_ this thing was conspiring against him.

Sunny vaguely remembers having to listen to tutting - kissing? clicking? - sounds when the cat was being attracted, so he tries some travesty of an impression of that. He definitely notices the cat coming closer now. It prances, leaping carelessly across the tall swathes of greenery.

Sunny loathes the stalling, but his heart thuds a little slower the closer that shadow at the edge of his vision returns to him. Okay. Wow. Whew. He pushes himself back from the doorframe a bit in relief. Sunny is never leaving the door open again. He's never gonna open it period. He doesn't even remember opening it, but whatever. It's over now, and he won't lose Mewo. He exhales heavily.

Wait. The cat stopped. So does Sunny's breathing.

It's a lot closer now. Sunny shifts his vision a little further forward to see what's _taking it so long._

It's looking the other direction. Chittering. Ears perked away from him and eagerly towards the trees.

Sunny doesn't want to go out there.

Mewo turns excitedly in the other direction.

Sunny tries to shift a foot forward. He thinks he hears the creaking of a weighed-down branch. His foot doesn't move.

Mewo crouches and stalks a bit further away.

 _Fuck._ Frick. Come back! Sunny's afraid that-

Mewo leaves his central vision.

The world is a blur of green and white as Sunny sprints forward in the grass, scoops up Mewo, bolts inside, and slams the glass door shut in his wake.

\------------------------------snrk--------------------------------

Sunny is getting strands in his nose from how he's using Mewo's fur as a breathing pillow.

He's currently on his bed - which he feels like he'd sprinted to - curled protectively around his cat, struggling to slow his breathing via carbon dioxide and reminding himself, tactilely, that he didn't just mess up enormously.

Maybe he's freaking out a little too much. Sure, Mewo almost got lost out there, but if it did then he could just look for it. But it could end up anywhere. Sunny wouldn't know where to look. He wouldn't know how long it'd take to find it. It would be bullied by the other cats. It wouldn't know how to find food. It might get hurt by a larger animal. Sunny would get in trouble.

And Sunny doesn't go outside. He has no need to, first of all. Secondly... Well. He just doesn't want to.

He comes up with as many excuses as he can to explain away his pounding heart.

Mewo squirms lightly in his arms, usually incredibly pleased to be held and cuddled, but very much not enjoying the tight way Sunny is trapping it. But he can't make himself loosen his hold.

He knows he's being unreasonable. It's just a cat. He shouldn't have panicked so much.

Still, he can't let go of it yet. Is the window closed? He needs to know. Sunny lifts his head a millimeter to check, peering past Mewo's fur and relaxing only the slightest bit to find it shut.

Mewo takes its chance to slip through that millimeter's extra space and jumps out of his arms. Sunny flinches and braces his hands on the bed to jump after it- then, puts forward a monumental effort to resist such an unnecessary action, and immediately feels an emptiness stab into his chest because of it.

That feeling of loneliness persists even when Mewo doesn't make its way to the closed door or window. But at least Sunny doesn't feel like he needs desperately to chase after it.

Its tail whips side-to-side in a violent way Sunny hasn't seen before, standing still in the shadowed patch of sun from his shuttered window and facing towards the door intently. He thinks it might be disappointed. He stares nervously after it, arms wrapped around his knees in self-comfort. He won't indulge it this time. Not with this.

However, past all of the baseless anxiety and panging emptiness, Sunny's a little embarrassed. He freaked out - is still freaking out - over a cat. Over _this_ cat, that's practically indoctrinated him into the lowest rung of the Society of The Cat Gospel with its preachy meowing and punishing claws. He thought he wanted it to disappear outside somewhere, away from him, so he would be free from its tyranny.

Mewo moves to sit, and Sunny covers up his own flinch from himself by twitching his head down to rest in his crossed arms, face hidden up to his eyes and no further. He's too worried about keeping Mewo in his sight. Sunny throws a shaky huff of frustration at himself. Seems he doesn't want it gone anymore.

The cat's tail continues to lash wildly. It really wants outside so badly? _Too bad,_ Sunny growls in his head with entirely too much venom, _you're an inside cat and you don't get to go outside._ It gets to stay inside, alone with Sunny as its favorite plaything to torture, and it'll just have to be happy with that. Is that so hard to accept?

The cat keeps throwing its tail.

Well great! Because Sunny isn't happy with it either.

Sunny fumes for a moment, glaring daggers into the cat's back as it ignores him like never before. The petty, grounding anger fades too quickly, and he's left with the same ache in his chest that's persisted ever since his cat left his arms.

...What's so great about outside, anyway? Sunny thinks back to how it was acting out there. Prancing around, making noise, seeming entirely and unequivocally thrilled to explore an entire forest of weeds and sticky seeds.

Mewo loaves - that is, lays down and tucks its legs under it - in its dim patch of shaded sunlight, tail still flicking, albeit to a more resigned swish. The sunlight.

Sunny remembers the sunlight.

He was outside for maybe a second - one he barely can recall visually - but the feeling of cloudless sunlight blanketing his skin is an experience he never knew he'd missed to such a visceral degree. The warm-cool-warm spring breeze that marbled his entire being in just the positive sensations of both temperatures, which only comes from each hitting him for the first time over and over, alternating and balancing in a special dance that the perfect indoor temperature could never perform. And even if he couldn't see exactly, the blurred colors before him were-

...so...

Eye-opening.

He felt more awake than ever in that moment, and he can't entirely blame that on the mindless panic.

He kind of wants to experience it all again. This is shocking to Sunny, because he's always been an indoor kid. He hides in the shadows so he can see his DS better and so he doesn't get sunburnt for standing in normal sunlight - not even at the beach or anything, it just has to be a cloudless day and twenty minutes of straight sun. He doesn't favor the wind because it forces him to wear clothing that covers more or suffer cold shivers. If he wears clothing that covers, he either gets so warm that he's too sleepy to function properly, or so hot that he doesn't feel like doing anything. He shutters the windows around the house and only cleans the inside of them when the sun is hidden somewhere. He's content with 72 degrees Fahrenheit still air.

He could just attribute his sudden need for sun and wind to the fact that there happened to be really, really good weather today. But even he has to admit that now his room feels small, and cold. Not cool-warm and big. Dark and grey. Not bright and vibrant. He never knew the difference before now and it bothers him.

Mewo starts viciously licking the spot Sunny is staring somberly through. Does it feel the same way as him? It must've felt everything as soon as it escaped the house, sooner than he did. Is it frustrated that he's keeping it in here?

It's washing itself. Does it want to wash itself of him, leave him alone in his dark, dreary house with nothing to do but sleep and dream until the next day comes and goes?

He felt the same way about it a while ago. Now he feels roleswitched.

He huffs a little dejectedly at that. Staring at Mewo as if waiting for something. Did he make it feel this lonely? As if the only sort of interaction it could possibly glean from him was to annoy something already in a bad mood? Sunny can tell Mewo's angry with him. Did it only try to connect with him, practically a cat bully, because it was trapped in the house with literally no other options?

Probably. Sunny feels like he can relate. Except he thought the cat was acting like his jail warden, but now he thinks Mewo might feel trapped here itself, and Sunny's the warden who can open the door.

...He can't let Mewo outside, however. He just can't.

Mewo relaxes back into its potato position, a sad-looking, tiny ball of legless fur warming itself in the cold, shuttered sunlight. Sunny finally takes his eyes off the cat to observe the closed shutters. Without another thought, he uncurls, walks through the chilled air, and stands beside the window, out of the light's way. Then he unshutters it.

It stings his eyes to look at the window light erupting so brightly into the dim room, and Sunny automatically squints his eyes shut, rubbing them and turning his back to the sun.

In his blindness, the sound of quiet purring is unmistakable. He opens his eyes narrowly at Mewo. Its stance doesn't look any different than a couple of seconds ago, but Sunny can feel the comforting sunlight on his back, spreading to warm his entire person, and he thinks it must be happy with that too. That's good.

Sunny stalks around the patch of sun - keeping his shoulder within it, but only his shoulder, just so he doesn't steal any light from Mewo - grabs a pillow from the bed, and lays it on the ground a distance behind the cat. Then he lies in the sunlight with it, facing towards the window.

He placed himself a respectful distance from Mewo, easing the emptiness in his chest with proximity but not wanting to scare the cat away - and yet, when he thumped down beside it, its purring seemed to increase threefold.

Sunny's not sure if he relaxes instantly because of the wash of warmth, relief because of Mewo, or because he's lying down and exhausted from everything. He's willingly and cozily lounging on the hard, dirty floor instead of his super comfortable, clean bed, and frankly, what Sunny would usually call a cursed miracle feels completely natural now.

He stares languidly at his hoodied arm. The garish purple glows as brilliantly as the colors outside (maybe a bit too intensely but Sunny appreciates it), and when the color makes his eyes ache, he closes them, and likes how the white looks different when its source is direct instead of reflected.

A still moment passes and Sunny doesn't daydream. The experience of the sun touching his skin fills his mind completely, more vivid than his most lucid fantasies. More interesting than his most adventurous musings, despite nothing happening.

He realizes he could never daydream something like this.

Sunny could fantasize for an hour at a time on a particularly inspired day. He feels he could stay in this meditative state for the whole five extra hours he has today. Mewo is really good at finding things to do without having anything to do. Sunny feels a prick of guilt at that.

He opens his eyes to consider the cat, still in the same position as before. It seems to have forgiven him (?) so he ventures to lift a heavy limb and pet it - without prompt, of his own volition, just to make it purr a little louder. It welcomingly pushes its head into his hand and flops sideways, back facing Sunny, for better petting access. Sunny smiles a little, amused and glad.

He thinks he'll give Mewo some company for the next few free days. He could use it too, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol Sunny maybe you wouldn't be lonely if you didn't try to keep from thinking about your friends and actually went outside~ And don't be so dramatic, it's a cat and will love you so long as you feed it. But also, being depressed and lonely and having a cold kitty is u_u Mewo isn't a real therapy cat.
> 
> Anyways, I write a whole bunch of fluff and barely have to think about it. I write half a chapter of angst and I can't go two paragraphs without thinking "wait heck wait how does this affect the future, what does this imply, is this too dramatic?? or is it dramatic enough because of subtle background elements??? aaaaaaaa" and I'm not quite sure quite how this chapter turned out. We're definitely heading back towards your regularly scheduled fluff and humor next chapter though. I have Ideas (tm but not rlly, don't sue me).
> 
> Yes, i hc Aubrey would like Fortnite, Halo, and Doom Eternal in the future. She especially likes it when she can customize her characters to look cute and badass. She also likes story games like The Last of Us. <3


	5. Pretty Sure Friends Don't Do This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, the chapters just keep growing.

Sunny waggles his shoelace an inch in front of the cat's eyes.

He's ignored.

He wiggles it a centimeter from its eyes.

The cat's expression doesn't change, but he's being given a deadpan stare. He can feel it in his bones.

A millimeter, then. Right on its face.

Its head scrunches back and its eyes squint shut in a miracle of tolerance. The shoelace continues to be rejected.

Sunny drops the string on it. The cat just lets it half-slide off as it goes straight back to staring out the glass door. Sunny huffs, exasperated, hoping the cat will understand and give him some mercy.

Of course, all it cares about anymore is going out the back door. It keeps its focus away from Sunny, so he gets up and walks away, done for the day.

Mewo mewls pleadingly after him, though, and Sunny's feet automatically stop him in his tracks. He rubs his temples roughly. He's getting a headache from the frustration of everything.

He's tried everything. Really, he has. The past few days have been full of Sunny trying to make up to Mewo for being incredibly (kind of) mean to it (though he still feels semi-justified in how it was a scoundrel towards him) and of him trying to connect with it.

He mostly did whatever he thought it liked, based on his previously grueling experiences. He sacrificed one of the feather duster sheathes and shook it around for Mewo to bat at (he had to clean feather remains from the floor and his clothes afterward). He sat down and pet it until its purring ceased and it seemed to fall asleep (his legs went numb and his petting arm was tired for a while after). He fed it pretty much without prompting this time (he still can't believe that he'd forcibly woken himself from a dream. Now he doesn't have the pleasure of remembering it). he'd let the cat ride in his hoodie, just because, even if he wasn't doing anything whatsoever (possibly the one break he had, even if he'd ended up pacing everywhere and zoning out).

Sunny presumed it might be fun to hang out with Mewo, but he's pretty sure he's not having any fun whatsoever. (He gave it a chance. He has to admit it sucks catering to a cat.)

...Well, there were a few acceptable activities. Lying in the sun together for example, just relaxing. Several sparse moments of light cuddling, which Mewo seems to appreciate so long as Sunny isn't completely encasing it. A soft, fluffy head poking from beside Sunny's neck when he carried it around in his hood. And playing with the feather duster wasn't boring at first, or at the end, when Mewo fell off the counter and Sunny was stuck between worrying like a responsible pet owner and snickering at the karma it so deserves.

And yet no matter what Sunny does, Mewo eventually finds its way to the back door - for no apparent reason, at some random time in the middle of him doing something for it - and it won't leave until Sunny tries something different and increasingly desperate.

Let it mess up his clothes? Back to the door.

Feed it a third time today? Back to the door.

 _Encourage_ it to climb him? Back to the door.

Sunny would tear the door from its frame and throw it into oblivion if his arms weren't flesh noodles. And if leaving a hole in the wall wouldn't lead to the worst-case scenario. As it was, shuttering it just made the cat hide behind the curtains, to which Sunny panicked and dug up the whole house for a full ten minutes before unshuttering them and finding Mewo lying innocently by the glass. Inside, thankfully. He shakily, grudgingly left them unshuttered after that.

Sunny's run out of ideas. Mewo doesn't even purr anymore when he gives it attention, not when it sits in front of that door. He's getting anxious. If that door opens even a little bit, it'll be gone in an instant, he's sure. And it won't take its time running away, unlike previously.

It's certainly getting annoyed with him. He knows he's being too needy. But he's giving it what it wants, right? He doesn't want to give up, doesn't want it to go, but it's been days and he's running out of ideas and he's just about tearing out his hair.

Sunny musses up his hair instead - still only barely behind the tipping point - sighs purposefully over the pitiful sound of Mewo's especially entreating _mew?_ and heads his way to the stairs.

He waits automatically at the beginning of the steps, forgetting for a moment that Mewo might just stay at the door. He tenses up in preparation to make the venture alone - not that he understands why it takes more energy for him to climb without Mewo around. But when Mewo arrives and totters a singular step ahead of him, he sighs, allayed, and they make a much more relaxed excursion upwards together.

Sunny had decided to stumble to his room entirely on automatic, for admittedly no particular reason other than to sulk on his bed, unsure of what to do - maybe fall asleep early if he can throw himself on the bed and against the headframe hard enough. He throws open his door with all the grace and petulance of a child forced to finish math homework before they can leave and do something fun. Sunny wishes it was math work he needed finished. Numbers and symbols, secretly nebulous as they may be, are less enigmatic as the cat he's forced to make do with that wants everything and nothing of him.

It's only been two and a quarter days without homeschool work. Sunny's never going to complain about it again. He wants it _back._

Wait. Sunny stops in his doorway to consider another plan of action. He can almost feel the lightbulb floating above his head, brightening with an idea as dim as the lit musical desktop screensaver in front of him.

Dim, right. Well, Sunny thinks it's pretty bright right now, however, and jumps towards his desk with exhausted, braindead vigor.

Computers are supposed to be great for research, so Sunny was told. No more unnecessary car trips to the library, no return dates, everything in the comfort of your home, etc. etc. - all of which he never cared for until this very moment. Who needs to look stuff up when you never go into the outside world anyway? Sunny does. To his utter dismay.

Sunny decides to begin his search for information with Aliweb. He thinks he overheard at some point that it's the first search engine to be created, so it has to be really profound and developed by now, right?

Well. To start off, Aliweb's list of best websites has no "pets" category. A glorious sign of good things to come.

Sunny searches "cats" and half of everything is entirely unrelated.

"happy cat" apparently correlates with four links of "How to Find Peace of Mind," which he profoundly agrees with and subsequently clicks on, but there's nothing in there about cats. Whatsoever. All religion. How and why did this show up?

"make cat happy" is about as short and specific as Sunny can make his search and he's disappointed to find multiple duplicate titles of several exact same advertisement sites. He gives up on Aliweb.

He then tries his luck on Yahoo. Looking up "cats" gives him about 77 category matches for him to choose from. Entirely overwhelmed, Sunny chooses the nearest to what he thinks he might be searching for: Science. There's probably a science to making cats happy. Isn't that psychology in humans? Or is that a pseudo-science? Do those count?

Again, Sunny is overwhelmed. He knocks his forehead against the desktop screen. It's no wonder he never wanted to use this stupid "mini-library." It's nothing _like_ a library, entirely disorganized! That or cats are a rare species, only abundant in Faraway as a human-occupied animal reserve. He was so excited when he got it, too - naively misled to think this "super thick, technology-packed bad boy mechanical brain" could do anything better than his thin Gameboy or a trip to the real library.

..His mini-mental rant kind of ends there with a moot point. He can't use either to research. He squints back at the screen.

"C.L.A.W. - a club for cats, to teach cats how to better rule their households."

Sunny rotates rigidly to stare wide-eyed at the cat waiting in his doorway.

Does Mewo know how to use the computer better than Sunny.

Wait, scratch that, has this menace been strategizing against him this entire time??

Mewo blinks slowly, unconcerned at his revelation. Sunny is just a tad intimidated. He's decidedly going to shut down the computer and unplug it after this.

Sunny takes his time scrolling through the links - entirely untrusting of the extra "subcategories" listed above them, considering he's finding various unscientific things within the science category. He scrolls and clicks past funny pictures, screensavers, obvious (possible?) misinformation on cat world domination, what age your cat is in human years (Sunny can't remember Mewo's birthday), etc. He scours through vague document after useless forum after obscure website until Sunny's not sure what's fact or fiction or roleplay.

After the third website written in cat point of view, Sunny is absolutely testing in the future if Mewo can understand human language.

He faceplants on the desk. Sunny didn't know that web surfing required so much patience, something he's in a low quantity of. He takes a break by randomly surfing around Entertainment > Humor > By Topic > Animals > Cats, setting up a few "Funny Cats" video downloads for later viewing, and flopping facedown on his bed. That is, his collection of comforters and his pillow pre-scrunched up on the floor right where the sun shines directly through in the afternoon.

Sunny exhales slowly into the blankets, taking his time deflating. He belatedly places his pillow on his back halfway through, just in time for Mewo to land on it with a muffled _pomph_ from both him and the pillow. He hears the light shredding of his very necessary nightly headrest as the cat kneads. He slumps even more.

It's.. about time he got a fluffier pillow anyway, he guesses.

It's times like these that Sunny wonders if he's given in to Stockholm Syndrome. Here he is, acting as a doormat for the cat, sacrificing his rest and resting tools for it to be happy, and what does _it_ do other than ruin him and his things and go back to _that door,_ begging to abandon him here?

Yes, Sunny knows it's boring. Yes, he knows there's little to do, of _course_ he does, but he thought the cat would be fine with doing cat activities. Twirling a string around isn't exactly interesting or satisfying but he's not the cat, here.

..Well, if it's smart enough to use the computer, Sunny should suppose it might favor more human-level activities just like him.

Sunny sighs for the nth time, gently sliding the pillow from his back, carrying a recumbent Mewo into his vision with it. It gawks at him with large eyes, befuddled.

Large eyes, huh. Or is it small cheeks? Sunny thinks back through all of the disorganized information he'd read on the desktop, to a few articles detailing how to determine the sex of your cat.

 _No,_ there was no way he was looking.

But. There was one article that vaguely presented a few other physical traits specific to each sex. For example, that male cat heads are noticeably larger, and have bigger cheeks. That was pretty much it, though.

Feeling as if he'll break if he doesn't make some minuscule sort of progress with Mewo today, Sunny concentrates hard on the shape of Mewo's face. He tilts his head to each side, trying to understand what he's looking at.

It turns its head away from his intense gaze, obstructing his view, and he scritches it between its ears, guiding it to look towards him again with eyes closed in contentment. That's another thing he learned: cats prefer to be pet on the top of their head the most. Sunny resists petting its smooth back with a discontent frown. He'll just have to get over it, he grouses internally.

He.. thinks? Mewo's a female? Sunny isn't even halfway sure, seeing as it's a lot thinner than any of the cats he remembers meeting outside, despite packing on some weight recently. He goes with it anyway. It's not like it matters, since it won't be meeting any other cats outside, and he won't have to worry about-

Sunny shivers. He won't have to worry about _more Mewos._ One cat he's implied to be of indentured servitude to is enough as is.

Does this mean he has to call it by 'she' now? Mewo's just a cat.

But, he supposes he wouldn't want it calling him 'it' if it could speak. Which it doesn't. Though, he's not so sure about that after finding out about C.L.A.W...

Um, he supposes he wouldn't want Super Golden Mewo calling him 'it' whenever it gives him super cat wisdom. Whenever _she_ does. He might need to reimagine it- _her_ as less masculine.

...Well. Does he really have to? Super Mewo kinda acts more masculine anyway, as far as he can tell. Super Mewo can be a masculine she. He'll just have to see about real Mewo.

And to continue the previous point, Sunny wouldn't call one of his friends 'it.'

Mewo looks away from Sunny and towards the door.

Of course, yes, now Sunny has solved all of his problems by looking up very relevant information from the internet! He now knows what to call his cat to better respect it- her if it does indeed understand human language. That's why Mewo still looks as if it- as if _she_ wants to leave the room, still.

Sunny really thinks he'd have an easier time trading ideas with someone in-person about this.

Still and yet, without that option, Sunny buries his face in the blankets again and focuses on the feeling of sunlight caressing his frustratedly tense, resignedly relaxed back. He's officially out of ideas again. Not even Super Golden Mewo, in all of- her kitty wisdom, can think of something to help him now.

He doesn't even want to try to daydream right now. Of all the kinds of exhaustion Sunny secretly loathes - despite giving into them with all too much ease - emotional exhaustion is his least favorite. It messes with his head, and makes his dreams as unpleasant as reality, if not worse. He doesn't want to dream about Mewo running out the door. He doesn't want to dream about surviving the day all by himself like before. Thankfully the sun is out to take all of his focus.

Sunny sighs, again. Why does this cat have to make him so depressed?

Sunny considers giving up. Falling back asleep, maybe, and kicking Mewo out of the room so he can relax. The cat will absolutely meow at his door for hours on end, but back then he thought he could do something about it. At least if it- she.. does that, Sunny will have a reminder that he's not stuck with himself when he's awake, even if he kind of is.

After all, he is, in no way, going to spend the rest of his life doing cat activities just to keep Mewo around. All she wants is to go back to that door, and Sunny's just about ready to go outside with her to search for some human-grade entertainment.

For example, cards. Sunny lifts his head a bit to see and touches Mewo's paws. They pull away. Whoops.

Or videogames. He thinks to refrain from touching them again, but.. he doesn't. They slip under Mewo and disappear. Nothing requiring hands, then.

Not Hide-And-Seek. He'll never find Mewo again.

..Tag? He pokes Mewo. She takes one for the team and doesn't tag back. +1 win for Sunny, first of likely an infinity.

Sunny flops on his cheek. Mewo's a smart cat - some sort of agent working for C.L.A.W., trying to leash Sunny, certainly - but he doesn't think it knows how to do any of those activities. He tries to think back to what the internet told him cats _can_ do.

Reading and writing are implied. Sleeping all day. Using the toilet, but Sunny heavily doubts Mewo knows how to use the toilet correctly. Backflips. Fetching things like a dog?

Cats can do dog things. Cats are trainable. Mewo is smart.

Sunny gets a wonderful, probably doomed idea. He's going to teach Mewo how to do human things. And maybe, just maybe, encourage her to leave the door alone.

All he needs are treats.

\-------------------------------------------smh--------------------------------------------

Sunny, knees supporting him on top of the kitchen counter, digs through the food cabinets with a vigor he only had at the beginning of the week. Which is to say, he's a little shaky from the stress of everything, and is perhaps a little too confident about what he's about to do, but if he can just find-

Ah ha! Canned chicken chunks. Cats like chicken and fish, Sunny remembers.

He's not so sure how many treats exactly that he needs. Sunny presumes it's all based on a point system; one treat for "okay," five for "great," ten for "amazing," zero for "not even close." Seems reasonable enough, just like a written quiz. He's optimistic that Mewo will understand since she's a smart kitty.

Sunny goes ahead and fishes into the cabinet for more cat-edible items. Sardines, check. Chicken noodle soup, _maybe_ check. ....Scooby Snack graham crackers?

Sunny hovers the box next to his neck and listens to light sniffing in his ear. It stops quickly, so he sets it back. Sunny can infer that Scooby Snacks are only for dogs and humans, not cats.

Oh! Sunny pulls out a small, half-empty box of real, genuine cat treats, shaking the contents a little.

Mewo _rips_ across his shoulder in response, gripping onto it with her claws and stretching her neck as far as she can towards the box without falling over, pulling harshly on Sunny's skin. He drops the box and it clatters off the counter and onto the ground, Mewo dropping with it.

Sunny has a feeling - _pulsing_ in his shoulder - that those cat treats will very likely be a lot more effective than anything else he has pulled out. He bites his lip and takes his time putting everything away, letting the pain settle.

Then, Sunny carefully, _carefully_ plucks the unspilled box from the ground where Mewo is sniffing at it, ascending it slowly into the air above Mewo and a whole outstretched arm's length away from himself.

Mewo sits patiently on the ground, watching the box with keen eyes and an excitedly flicking tail.

Okay.

Sunny, even more cautiously sluggish this time, brings the box to his chest.

Mewo waits.

Alright. Good.

Sunny opens the box.

Mewo climbs Sunny's front at sonic speed and more violently than ever before!

Sunny promptly throws the box and collapses on the ground in freshly-clawed agony.

\---------------------------------------sigh-------------------------------------------

After about ten minutes of writhing on the ground while hurriedly swiping up and fighting the cat over dozens of fallen treats, Sunny.. lies on the ground for a little longer. Mewo bats at his hand, intent on getting into the box hiding under it no matter how much suffering it needs to inflict.

Good cat. Fun cat. Maybe definitely not right now, but it'll be worth it. Once he trains her.

Sunny rolls over and scoops up Mewo with the arm _not_ carrying the box of treats, secures her under his shoulder, and walks into the living room to where the game controllers are.

Sunny may have to admit that thinking he can teach Mewo to game is a _little_ optimistic, but only because it's difficult to teach someone who hasn't played before to do it now. He vaguely remembers trying to encourage his mother to play with him at one point, but it was such a struggle that both gave up.

Luckily, Mewo is a young cat. He thinks. He couldn't really do the cat-years-to-human-years conversion without knowing her exact birth date, but he knows she was a tiny kitten not too long ago.

So just like anyone younger than twenty-five years, she should be able to pick up on the controls quickly. Sunny is confident in this.

Sunny kneels and sits on his legs. Then, all in one movement, drops Mewo beside him and darts onto his stomach, burying the treat box beneath him.

Mewo tries to sniff underneath him and Sunny blocks the way with his arms. Then she jumps on top of him. Stands there.

...Sunny isn't sure what she's waiting for, but he takes the opportunity to open the box beneath him and reach a few fingers inside. Mewo jumps off and digs her head where Sunny's hiding the box, so he rolls to face away from her and curls tightly around the container, quickly pouring a generous pile of treats into his hand and wrapping it into a tight fist around them. The already pungent stink of the treats is overwhelming for Sunny to breathe in like this, but he can't reward Mewo for climbing all over him.

Mewo lays a ticklish paw under his ear, and Sunny closes the box with his other hand. Hah.

Sunny olds out his smelly fist towards Mewo, distracting her as he sits up on his legs again and hides the box between them. Then, he neatly sets a game controller in front of him, facing opposite to him, and leads Mewo with his fist to the front of it.

Sunny pulls three treats from his fist, and neatly places them around the A button.

The first he placed is gone before Sunny can even process where it went.

Mewo gulps the second down without laying a single paw on the button, and Sunny snatches and hides the last before she can scarf it down at lightning speed. Sunny gawks incredulously at her and he holds his hand high, Mewo standing to grab his fist with her paws, sniffing and nipping at his knuckles.

Greedy cat! Sunny's should've expected as much, that Mewo would completely ignore the button in favor of stealing from him as quickly as possible. She's purring smugly, the cheating criminal.

..or, she just didn't know that the button needed to be pressed. But Mewo's a smart cat, she could've figured it out. Sunny can forgive her misdemeanor, however, considering the controller buttons look somewhat different compared to keyboard buttons.

Sunny figures he may need to show Mewo that the buttons can be pressed, so he tries to grab Mewo's paw- and it slips away. Sunny looks Mewo in the eye. Sorry cat, Sunny's trying his best to be patient and respectful of boundaries, but there's no other way to do things, here.

Unless.. Sunny picks up Mewo from behind her forelegs using both hands, including the fisted, treat-filled one. Mewo isn't really paying attention when Sunny lifts her slightly and depresses the A button with one of her paws, too focused on sniffing his treat hand.

He doesn't give Mewo a treat for that one, since she already stole two. She has to make up for that.

Sunny hovers a treat in front of the A button. Mewo tries stealing the treat again before providing Sunny his service, so he snatches it back. He lifts Mewo again, touches the button for her, sets her down, and gives the treat. "Okay" is generous for Sunny needing to marionette Mewo for everything, but he supposes he needs to show her that it's rewarding to do what he does. He does it again.

Hover the treat, lift Mewo, touch the button, give the treat.

Hover, lift, button, treat.

He's not sure if she's paying attention, but she has to notice the pattern. She's a smart cat.

Sunny's patience runs out after the fifth cycle of this, and he refuses to pick Mewo up again. He hovers the treat around the A button, snatching it away when Mewo ignores the task.

Eventually, she just steps over the controller - _the audacity_ \- and latches onto Sunny's hoodie sleeve when he lifts the treat up high.

Look- just. Sunny unlatches and pushes Mewo back behind the controller. He points with one finger, treat buried under the others. Right there. He pushes the button. Do that, just like the _last fifteen times, cat._ Mewo ignores it, nibbling lightly at his hand. Sunny growls and just barely refrains from burying his face into his odorous fists.

If Sunny could just. Get Mewo to use the A button, he would at _least_ be able to play some button-masher game against her. He doesn't even care anymore just how annoying it is to fight someone who presses the same button over and over. All he wants is to play one of his multiplayer games.

Sunny just wants to play with someone else. Even if it's just a cat.

A meow in place of a missing _"argh!"_ A purr to replace a _"ha! Now you owe me an Orange Joe!"_ A head bump to emulate a friendly elbow and a _"cheer up, you'll get me next time! Wanna play again?"_

Mngh. Sunny almost buries his head into the carpet.

He gets interrupted by Mewo sticking her cold nose between his fingers. He lets go of the treat, shakes off his mood, shoves the box of treats under his arm, and gets up to find some cards, hurrying away while she's distracted.

Mewo's a smart cat. Sunny just doesn't know how to train cats, but he's figuring it out. They'll be able to do _something_ eventually. Just not gaming. Sliding cards around is simpler than pressing buttons, anyway.

Sunny walks back into the living room with Mewo - having magically teleported behind him after inhaling the treat - and sits on the ground slowly as to not squish the cat twirling around his legs, reaching up and catching onto his shorts, meowing more rapid-fire than ever before.

Sunny deftly slides whatever treats he has left back into the box to shuffle and deal his Uno cards with both hands, then discreetly pours some back out into his hand while Mewo sniffs and explores her given hand. Paw. Allotted cards.

Mewo can't hold her cards, lacking opposable thumbs and all, so they have to be spread out on the floor. Sunny can see her deck. He could win very easily this way.

_"Hey, Kel, you're cheating! Stop looking at my cards you jerk!"_

Sunny respectfully looks away.

Then he realizes he _needs_ to look at Mewo's cards to help her learn. Doesn't make for a very fun game, but it's only the learning phase for now. He decides to go easy on her and draw the game out.

...Should he explain it aloud? Mewo obviously isn't a hands-on learner, as evidenced by the controller. But he's.. marginally sure she can't _speak_ english, despite typing it.

Mewo's sniffing at a yellow card. There's a yellow card on the face-up deck. Maybe she's a visual learner. Sunny didn't know there was a difference, but he's keeping an open mind, here.

He picks up that card for Mewo and places it on the other. Then hands her five treats. She steps all over her cards just to get to them quicker, and Sunny has to push her back.

She steps on them again. Sunny pushes her back. She ignores the cards a third time, so he taps them, and she sniffs at them again.

Sunny thinks this is going pretty well, comparatively.

She sniffs at a green 8. There's a yellow 2 on the pile.

She's.. just looking at her cards, Sunny assures.

She sniffs a blue 4.

She sniffs a red 5. She's getting there! There's a yellow card right next to that.

She sniffs the blue 4 again.

She looks up at Sunny and steps on her cards. Ah. She has no idea what to do.

After a bit longer playing, a.k.a. a bit longer of the cat knocking over the deck, mostly picking cards that can't even be put out, and eventually completely ignoring her paw-hand (Sunny assumes this is done in frustration), Sunny gives up on Uno.

He tries War instead, a much simpler game. All Mewo has to do is learn how to flip cards from the top of her deck. Sunny can do the rest.

It.. doesn't really work out. Again, lacking opposable thumbs, Sunny figures it's difficult for Mewo to try and flip the cards, so he settles for trying to teach her to slide them off. He can flip them for her. She doesn't even do that very well, however, being Sunny tried puppeteering her like last time and of course that didn't work.. Sunny decides that Mewo probably thinks her luck isn't good enough for War. He remembers reading about how black cats are bad luck.

_"Oh wow, Sunny, that's not the best luck you have there. That's okay! I think you'd do really well in a strategy game, anyhow."_

Yeah, he can relate to that. He didn't really want to play War anyway.

..Alright. Sunny's disappointed. But tag is really simple compared to both cards and gaming, so. Time to try that, he sighs internally.

Mewo is laying on the cards now, seemingly unaware that they're distinctly not a part of the floor. He pokes her with his treat hand.

She stares at it.

.........?????

Sunny throws up his hands, tossing treats everywhere. Come on! That's so easy! Just a few minutes ago Mewo was tackling, booping, pawing his hand incessantly - he shouldn't even have to train her for this! Sunny is really starting to doubt the stupid intelligence of this cat.

Mewo gets up and saunters her way over to one of the fallen treats, eating it and sniffing sedately for more.

She doesn't even finish looking for them all - Sunny can spot a few stragglers - before walking back to _that door_ and lying in the sunlight.

Sunny gapes.

Then, feeling more exhaustion pour over him than ever before, he promptly collapses onto his side, itchy carpet scratching his cheek and arms, and decides to stay there for eternity.

That's it. He's done. He was kidding himself this whole time. The cat doesn't know written English, isn't an agent of C.L.A.W., can't play cards, can't press a single button, can't even _tag_ him back for some reason, can't hang out with him, can't be fun for him, can't be his _friend-_

The cat can't be his friend. It can't. He can't do anything with it.

Ugh, who wants a cat as a friend, anyway?

Sunny does. Sunny wants Mewo to be his friend.

Sunny wants a friend.

Sunny doesn't feel like going outside.

He hides his face under his arm. Almost feels like crying, he's so frustrated, and so- and so...

...Sunny doesn't feel like thinking about it.

He lies there for a while on the ground, curled up and tired, yet tortuously awake. Disillusionment and whatever other emotions he doesn't care to name anchor him to the carpet, pinning a white blanket of lethargy around him, despite being repelled by it. Sunny almost decides to submit himself to mind-numbing apathy, just to let the time pass a little less agonizingly until he can fall asleep.

What else does he want to do.

He feels a tiny, warm body lean on his back, and he remembers what he wants.

Nothing, he tells himself. There's nothing to do except feel terrible in that cat's presence.

_"Why don't you give the kitty a hug, Sunny~?"_

What good is comfort from something that likely doesn't even know what a hug is. It's the whole reason Sunny feels like this anyway.

"It won't hurt to try?"

claws.

"..Just one hug, please? And then I'll give you one, too."

...Sunny just wishes he could have a real one. But he can't

He sighs externally, rolling around to face the cat with a pitiful urge. It twists its head backward in surprise, back facing Sunny. He sits on his knees, picks it up from behind its forelegs, and spins it around to face him. It looks ridiculous, like its offering him an embrace.

At least he doesn't need to train it for this, since it's let him marionette it this whole time. He doesn't think it'll make him feel better, but he really, really needs a hug right now, and this cat is all he has. At least if he feels worse he might just pass out from sheer serotonin deficiency.

He brings the cat to his chest, its back legs supported by his lap, and wraps his arms lightly around it.

And Mewo hugs back.

Her paws don't just hang there, or push against his front like Sunny expected, but they _purposely wrap around his neck_ about as much as cat forelegs can. Her tiny head rests under his ear, and Sunny can feel the purr she's had going from the beginning of their entire treat endeavor more deeply than ever before.

It's comforting. Actually comforting. Like a real, honest hug. With bonus purring attached.

It still feels nothing like any hug he's had before but it's. Tiny. Warm, but in such a small area. Like hugging a baby. A.. really furry baby.

"It's like hugging a little brother. Or a little sister, in this case!"

Sunny doesn't think he could ever treat Mewo as less than his little sister ever again.

Well, no, okay, he still has to admit that the cat is a cat, and cannot do human activities. Sunny slowly falls onto his back so Mewo doesn't pull away from hugging him vertically. She doesn't let up on the hug as he does this, and he's grateful. He still feels the sting of disappointment from.. everything that happened earlier. Or failed to happen, rather.

But.. at least there's this. Sunny lightly presses his cheek into Mewo's fur. This is okay.

He glances at the glass door. Then, the front door. This is okay for now.

He snuggles back into Mewo, enjoying this for as long as she'll stand it.

...Oh. And Sunny's not gonna keep spoiling the cat like he did the last few days, he notes to himself. Surely he'll give it attention, but only _maybe_ will he go the extra inch for a hug or two. Sunny is okay with an arrangement like that.

He can't believe that he'd stooped so low, before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail the Wayback Machine. My greatest tool. Death be to Aliweb. Your time of relevance is long past, and never should've existed to begin with.  
> No, looking at a cat's face is not a reliable way to figure out your cat's sex. But Sunny got Mewo's right, at least.  
> Training cats takes a long while. Sunny used way too many treats in much too short of a time.  
> And sorry if it wasn't clear, but those voices Sunny is hearing are all memories.  
> Whew! I'm not so sure how this chapter turned out, either. Fluff and humor is quickly turning into something else I guess ;; we'll see where this goes.
> 
> EDIT: i gotchu a nice surprise in the next chapter ;3


	6. The Beginning of A Trend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a two-parter since some cool dudes on tumblr convinced me it's a better idea to split this one :) especially darkgamer10101, thank you bro for your kind advice.
> 
> Also wow!! Finally some different characters. Writing Kel was a breath of _fresh air._
> 
> _He tried so hard, and got so far,_

“FRESH AIR AT _LAAAST!!!_ ” Kel yells his lungs out into the bright, beautiful outside world.

He greedily inhales through his nose and gratefully exhales through his mouth with a happy sigh, outstretched arms hugging the sunlight gracing his UV-deprived skin and filling him with a warmth he’s craved for months!

Or, well, ever since his last grocery run. But this sunlight feels _different._ More.. beautiful!

Those flowers over there? Kel drops to his knees and sniffs the heck out of those fragrant buds. Beautiful!

That bug on the wall? Kel scrambles to his feet and shoves his face inches from the little bugger, smiling maniacally at it. Beautiful!!

That leaf floating in the breeze? Kel sprints like a man on fire, swiping at it with all the childish recklessness of a month-old kitten. BEAUTIFUL!!!

Maybe Kel should find a different ajec.. noun? Word, than beautiful, but that’s pretty much it!! _BEAUTIFUL!!!!_

Kel happily lets that leaf go free on its merry way and twists in his run, protecting his head and fall-rolling onto his back with a hard _”Oof!”_ UGH he’d forgotten how hard the ground is. The place he first hit the ground hurts now. _BEAUTIFUL!!!!!_

Okay that’s old now.

But Kel is finally free to do what he wants and suddenly wants to experience everything he’s missed since the last time he’s had this much vacation to himself. Which is to say, he’s done all of his chores for once and his parents are gonna be gone at the vet with Hector for only four more hours and Hero already ate, but!! That’s four whole hours!!

Kel has so much to do.

He’s not sure what to do.

Does he have anything to do?

EVERYTHING, of course!!

…though, it _has_ been a while. He’s.. not sure at all what ‘everything’ even means for him.

“Hoo boy,” he sighs aloud. Four hours. Wow. Yep. That is, a lot of time. Uh huh. He tsks.

Well, he can enjoy the sunlight while he’s lying there! But he’s done that already. Enjoy the wind? He hasn’t really done that yet. Kel closes his eyes, hands still situated behind his head.

The wind feels nice. Mmmhm. Yep, sure missed that. Check that off the list. ..Alright.

…yah hah…

…Kel rocks himself forward, lifting up his torso. He looks to where the bug was earlier. Maybe so he can mess with it?

He can’t spot it. He’s pretty sure it’s not there anymore.

Ah.

Okay.

Kel blanks.

 _Man,_ why is this so hard?? It’s playing! Goofing off! The most natural thing a kid can do!

“ARGH,” Kel yells into the air again with an entirely different attitude from maybe a minute or two before. He throws himself on his back – stopping just short of the ground before lowering himself more gently – and glares at the trees and the clouds above.

He’d try picking shapes out of the little puffs but most of them don’t even look like anything. And it’s a really sunny day outside, like, practically cloudless. Perfect for playing basketball, or football, or any ball or something. Though playing alone kinda sucks.

Right. Playing. Sunny. Alone.

OH OH he could _play with his friends why didn’t he think of that sooner._

Kel jumps to standing – stumbling a little from the rush of static in his eyes – and just about sprints to Sunny’s front door to knock and invite him out to play before-

Well, before he thinks. Before he remembers why he hasn’t visited. Before he remembers why he’s practically worshipping the ground of everything that isn’t the floorboards of his house.

It’s been _months_ since Kel has had so much free time. Since he’s been able to hang out with anyone but Hero. Since he’s even _seen_ anyone other than Hero.

Well, Kel feels like he’s overexaggerating again. He’s been outside, he’s seen and talked with people at school and on his shopping runs, he’s had.. some free time, here and there, that he admittedly mostly spends sleeping.

But Sunny? Aubrey and Basil? He hasn’t seen those guys in forever. Ever since... Hero had started moping in bed all day, every day.

Yeah.. Kel sighs outwardly, staring guiltily at Sunny’s top floor through the trees. He really, honestly feels bad for not visiting. Especially after.. everything.

Mari. Kel looks away.

He wondered, and still wonders, a lot about how Sunny and the others are doing. Are they depressed and lying around all the time like Hero? Is that why they haven’t been able to visit Kel instead of him visiting them? He’s wondered before if maybe he should check up on them.

But he had to watch over Hero. And plus, the others have their families they can rely on, just like Hero has Kel and their parents.

There’s also school, and all the chores Kel has to keep up with and still isn’t used to, and he _still_ hasn’t been able to stop going to sleep early every night from being so tired, you know, and well, even if Sunny is next door, Kel couldn’t just visit since he’d only be over for like ten minutes tops, and Kel would be super bummed if one of his friends came to his house and suddenly had to leave - all that excitement, fwoosh, down the drain; talk about Major Disappointment - though Kel wouldn’t really invite anyone to his place anyways, so even if he could’ve invited Sunny over it’s.. nah. Not right now. And he can’t _call_ Sunny or anyone because he never needed to get anyone’s landline numbers, they all used to just meet up whenever or made plans in-person, and even if he did have anyone’s number, what would he even talk about? Not Mari, and Kel’s been too busy with depressing family stuff for anything else to talk about, and he can’t expect the others to know what to say – especially Sunny, since he’s not really a talkative kid, and-

And a lot of stuff, really. He still feels bad, but he’s sure they’d understand.

Sunny might, especially if he visits him now!

Kel stares ahead into the small swathe of trees separating his and his neighbor-and-friend’s yards. Four whole hours – a little less now, but still – is a hella lot of time to finally do something together. They can catch up, and Kel can apologize, and he can ask when Sunny is going back to public school after homeschooling for the second half of the year, and.. well? Kel’s not entirely sure how they’re gonna start hanging out again on the regular, what with his still-hectic schedule after today, but he’s already stalwartly stomping through the line of trees and foilage. They’ll figure something out!

Kel is so focused on pulling his feet through weeds and brambles while keeping his eyes determined and forward – admittedly, he should’ve went around, but he’s focused and unstoppable right now – that when a malicious black smudge appears in the edge of his vision, it _jumps_ out at him.

Kel screeches for his _life._

Normally he’d’ve near-teleported out of there toot sweet in a mile-long sprint, but the brambles tied around his ankles knock him onto his butt when he twists around, and Kel screams and covers his face in preparation for a puma attack!

Or a panther!

Or a blackbear cub! Which would be adorable and probably not dangerous on its own but Kel’s pretty sure bear parents are _hella vicious._

..actually, Kel’s not sure those animals exist in this part of the country, otherwise he might’ve (might’ve) been more careful, like, on automatic. Big black dog? Or, medium black dog, considering the size of the smudge.

Hey why isn’t he mauled yet?

Kel dramatically peeps open a single eye, lowering his crossed arms from in front of his eyes just a little. Well, there’s nothing standing above-

 _“Mrow?”_ questions some cat he mistook for a beast.

“Oh my _gOSH,”_ replies Kel, burying his face in his hands and hunching over, breathing in relief and breathing out embarrassment. He hopes nobody heard his squealing.

Well, if Hero got up out of bed and came outside to check on him, that’d be kinda nice.

He feels the cat brush up against him. Aw, a nice kitty.

“Hey, buddy,” he coos, lifting his face out of his hands so he can locate and pet the kitty, “you won’t tell anyone what just happened, ri-“

A black cat stares up at him from right up against his side, rubbing up against him despite him not smelling like any sort of food since Kel sorta skipped lunch to have more free time outside. A very distinctly thin black cat. A thin black cat with peculiar eyes that remind him, even now, all grown up, of someone he hasn’t seen in a while.

The person who is in the house Kel is thirty seconds away from. That the cat is near to.

“…Omigosh Mewo?!” Kel gapes. Mewo chirps as if in response and brushes up against him again, like an affectionate hello.

Kel’s pretty shell shocked. Mewo purrs happily.

Like, first he thought he was gonna get messed up, then he finds Mewo of all cats. Mewo dashes around him, rubbing herself against him all the way.

Is she even supposed to be out here? The cat jumps onto his lap and comfortably kneads stabby-paws into one of his legs.

Kel doesn’t really see a collar, and that’s kinda dangerous. Mewo cat-smiles up at him with an excited “Mrraa?”

Kel thinks he’s gonna cry from all the attention he’s getting.

“Oh man, you’re so _cute,_ ” he grins, scooping up Mewo from under her soft belly and into a big ol’ hug. “I missed you too!” he cheers into her fur, smooshing his face into the soft and welcoming kitty.

She squiggles a bit so he supports her feet instead of her belly, and hugs her gratefully to his chest.

Kel holds her outwards from under her forelegs. “Man, what are the odds of finding you out here?” he wonders at her, and her tail flicks. Kel isn’t sure what that means.

“You probably don’t belong out here, do you, bud? I’ll get you back to your home,” He reassures, tucking the cat against his chest with one arm so she doesn’t run away while he undoes the brambles around his legs. “I was headed there anyhow.”

He has to lean forward to undo the knots, and that sort of squishes Mewo under his chest rather than next to it, so he really should’ve expected her to climb and claw her way up his shoulder.

Ow.

Kel cringes at the claws pulling at his skin, turning his head to side-eye Mewo watching him from above. “You still do that, huh?” Kel laughs lightly, trying not to jostle her and tear up his shoulders. “You’re a bit of a big kitty for that, aren’t you?”

Mewo throws a “Mrrph” and keeps to her perch. Ah, whatever. Kel thinks it’s kinda cool to have a shoulder cat anyway, like having a pet hawk! Except it’s a cat. But it’s a _black_ cat, which makes it cooler, and cats eat hawks because they’re birds, and if that isn’t impressive then Kel doesn’t know what is.

Mewo’s a cool cat. She purrs loudly next to his ear. _Gosh_ did he miss this cat. He’s usually more of a dog person, but this cat’s something special. So friendly!! So cool!! Kel scritches her under her chin, and she rumbles like a cat three times her size. _Yeah,_ that’s why she scared him just now.

Kel unbinds his feet and carefully stands using only his legs – because he has awesome balance and strong legs, thank you very much – using both of his hands keep a hold on Mewo to stop her from rocking on or jumping off his shoulder. Then, using just one hand to hold her steady, Kel fights his way through the rest of the tree line and into Sunny’s yard.

Wow. The house is a weird sight for Kel to take in. Like, he’s pretty sure nothing has changed really, but he’s getting this feeling of.. familiarity, mixed with unfamiliarity? That’s more than a bit weird. He guesses that’s what happens when you haven’t been some place in a while, even though he’s been to Sunny’s house practically every day in the past. And with the sun shining from just behind it, the house has a sort of.. spooky air to it. It’s missing the life inside it, and looks almost abandoned, despite being lived in.

It makes him uncomfortable. And guilty, again. Maybe it _has_ been too long.

And that’s why Kel’s not gonna stop here. Uncomfortable or not, he knows Hero wouldn’t run away, even if he would’ve visited everyone much sooner.

Kel spots Sunny’s mom’s car in the driveway. He thinks she may not appreciate him holding her cat like this outside, so on the way to the door he plucks Mewo from his shoulder and cradles her one-armed. Then, he knocks.

….No answer. He knocks again.

…Aiight. He knocks a third time, harder. Mewo flinches and squirms in his grasp and he calms her down with pets while he waits.

One…two…three….

.…thirty five…thirty six…

He glances at Sunny’s mom’s car again. Then thinks of the time. It’s.. late afternoon, right? Are they asleep already? Kel might’ve considered going home if he didn’t have a little delivery in his arms. And if he didn’t have a dog.

He knocks a fourth time, hard, and covers Mewo’s ears before calling through the door, “Helloooo~? Sunny! Sunny’s mom? It’s Kel! I have your cat!” he howls, his face squished up next to it. Should he try knocking on the windows or something?

He hears a weary sigh and slow steps from inside and quickly steps back towards the door after shifting towards one of the glass panes. The door opens slowly, and Kel leans sideways to peer inside only a second sooner than it opens completely, catching Mewo with his other hand before she jumps.

In the doorframe stands a very, very worn-out woman. Her curly red hair looks dull and flattened with a bit of grease that comes from skipping a shower or two, a bit visibly tangled too with stray hairs sticking everywhere. She frowns down at him with a face not wearing any makeup, not even a little, which is a little unusual for a mom in Kel’s experience. She stares right through him with eyes that don’t even droop, yet look as sad as Hero’s, with way more than a touch of exhaustion. And she’s wearing loose pyjamas.

Oh man, did he wake her? It’s like, maybe around 4 PM, so Kel really couldn’t have expected that, but he feels really bad anyways. Yikes. He decides to go for polite and cheery.

“Hi, Mrs. Sunny’s Mom!” He smiles apologetically, then cringes and crumples that smile. He forgot Sunny’s last name. Is that rude? Whoops..

Sunny’s mom blinks and some of the focus returns to her stare. She looks Kel in the eyes this time, eyebrows raising and frown softening into one of surprise.

Kel averts his eyes and scratches the cat nervously, and she pushes her head against his hand gratefully. “Sorry for waking you up, ma’am, but uh. I found Mewo outside when I was coming over to visit,” he shrugs, shifting to hold Mewo up to Sunny’s mom using both hands.

Her eyes stay on his face for a moment, mouth slightly open and looking ready to say something before they shift downward and land on her cat smiling amicably in his grasp.

“Oh! Oh my word, that’s- she-“ She gently, frantically picks up Mewo from Kel’s hold and hugs the cat closely to her chest. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know how she got out, I’m so sorry, _I’m sorry,”_ she cries, distressed. She holds Mewo like she’d almost lost the cure for cancer, guilt and teary eyes and everything.

Mewo gives a sweet “Meow?” in the face of her mom’s distress while Kel panics a bit, waving his arms around wildly. “It’s okay!! It happens sometimes, I’m sure it’s not your fault!”

Sunny’s mom sighs wearily, burying her face in her cat’s fur. “She must’ve rushed by me when I came inside. I didn’t even notice… I’m sorry” she sighs, muffled. Mewo meows, unconcerned.

“That’s alright!!” _Oh geez, she’s really upset, wow-_ “Like I said, it happens! Sometimes I let Hector inside on accident, haha.” Kel puts forward, except that letting a dog in isn’t really like letting a cat out. The complete opposite, actually, in two ways.

Sunny’s mom just sighs again into her cat. Oh man. How’s Kel gonna fix this? By rambling as much positivity as he can, of course.

“Well, she’s here now, so that’s a good thing. And she seems pretty okay. Plus, she’s a lot thinner than the other cats around here, so even if she did get into a pinch, she could bolt pretty fast, I’m betting!” Kel keeps trying to cheer her up. If he thought Sunny’s mom looked sad before, witnessing her hunch over her cat like that is just heartbreaking. “And! Mewo scared me earlier, too. I thought she was a puma or something, so she could’ve intimidated other animals pretty bad if she got caught while she was out there – which, since she’s back, who’s to say she’ll even get out again?”

Sunny’s mom shifts her head to lean her cheek against Mewo, giving Kel a small, tired-eyed, tiny smile. Yes! It worked. “Thank you, Kel,” she hums.

Oof. Ouch. She remembered _his_ name. Kel still feels like he might have to ask for hers directly.

“So..” he begins, genuinely worried. “How are you? Are you.. doing okay?” Obviously not, but Kel should ask.

She frowns again, glancing away from Kel’s inquiring stare, before returning her look with an entirely less real smile than before, despite being wider. “I’m doing as okay as I can, honey. You don’t have to worry. What about you? Are you doing alright?”

Uhhhh Kel doesn’t wanna go there. Especially with how exhausted Sunny’s mom looks. “I’m fine! Don’t worry, I’m doing all good, ma’am.”

She looks.. skeptical is probably the word, but Kel thinks she looks worried. Like she’s trying to peer into his soul as gently as possible, or something. Kel’s a little uncomfortable with that, but thankfully she doesn’t push. “I’m glad to hear that, sweetie. I know it must’ve been rough.”

Yeah. Yeah, rough is a way to put it. But Kel’s fine, comparatively.

An awkward moment of silence passes, before Kel figures it’s his turn to say something.

“It’s all good, ma’am,” Kel replies belatedly.

“..Aw, Kel, what happened to ‘mom?’” Sunny’s mom jokes, trying to lighten the mood. “You can still call me that, if you’d like. You’re still one of my kids.” Aaand Kel’s heart hurts again.

He did used to call Sunny’s mom “mom” at one point. Kinda not that long ago? It feels like forever since Mari passed away, so many months. Before that though, when he did visit pretty much every week if not every day, he thought it was cool to have two moms. Each had a different set of rules for him to follow when he didn’t feel like adhering to the other, and that was hella convenient.

But, instead of returning to that, Kel just kinda puts his hands in his pockets and side-eyes the wall. He’s.. not sure what to say, so he shrugs guiltily.

Sunny’s mom smiles understandingly from the corner of his vision. Instead of shutting the door though, since Kel’s pretty sure there’s not really much to talk about, she continues with “It _has_ been a while, hasn’t it? What’s happened since you’ve been gone? Is school okay?”

She shifts Mewo more securely in her arms and leans more comfortably in the doorframe. She still looks dead-tired, but also one hundred percent ready to stand there and listen to Kel.

Oh.

“W-well, uh.. good?” Kel sputters, caught off guard. Sunny’s mom nods patiently for elaboration. Oh boy.

“My.. um, grades. Could be better.” They still suck, though he’s not sure how they _can_ still suck with how much he studies. There’s not much else he can do when he’s sometimes kicked out of his and Hero’s room to give Hero some space, and he’s stuck under the scrutiny of his parents while hanging out in the living room. They always think he’s procrastinating when he does stuff like play games and throw his ball around, so if he doesn’t study, he’s usually told to do chores.

“That’s alright, honey. School can be difficult, and I’m sure you’re trying your hardest,” Sunny’s mom reassures kindly.

Kel’s too shocked to grin at the validation before Sunny’s mom continues with another question. “How are your parents?”

That’s a bit too vague for Kel to answer right away. They’re kinda the usual – pushy for his success, getting onto him for not doing his chores right, just a little bit more in favor of Hero – but also more.. extreme. Like, he’s pretty sure they never thought he took his chores or school seriously, but now they’re a lot more vocal about it, especially now since he’s picking up all the slack for Hero. But Hero deserves the rest, and Kel’s parents think so too. They’re just not used to only Kel.

“Good,” he picks. “I mean, maybe a little stressed by Hero and me? I dunno. It sorta sucks,” he admits, egged on by some troubled feeling in his gut.

Sunny’s mom looks honestly saddened by that, smile falling away to a caring frown. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Kel,” she sympathizes. “I know your parents love you and Hero both very much. You’re good kids, each of you.”

Oomph. Another hit to the heart. Kel smiles a little wobbly as all the reply he can muster for that.

“How is Hero?” She asks, still with that same concerned frown.

Kel’s. Not sure what he should say to that. Hero’s doing terribly.

He won’t get up most of the time. He can barely be encouraged to attend school, and when he does, the teachers say he doesn’t get anything done, so most of the time he’s at home “sick” to protect his grades. He doesn’t really get up to eat or cook or bake either. Kel has _tried_ cooking some easy stuff himself to give to Hero in bed, but sometimes it’s really hard to get his brother to even turn to face him while he lies there, let alone encourage him to sit up and eat. Every now and then something warm will encourage him, but.. not often. Kel eats a lot of wasted canned soup and spaghetti-Os.

And yeah, talking about Hero not doing things he enjoys anymore, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually _like_ doing chores. All those exhausting chores Kel now has to do around the house that Hero used to do with vigor? When Hero was turned around and Kel offered he do one of them, you know, just to get the blood pumping and to go back to something normal, Hero had grimaced in ten times a stronger expression than Kel had seen in months. Turns out he probably only did them because Kel shoved them off, and Hero’s just a responsible guy. Kel’s sorry about that, understands why he doesn’t want to do that stuff now, especially. But.. yeah. A grimace is probably all Kel has seen from Hero in a while. He’s not happy.

But he doesn’t want to worry Sunny’s mom. Especially since Hero doesn’t seem that open to visitors right now.

“I’m watching over him,” Kel quietly shrugs. He rubs the end of his shirt between his fingers. He should probably be back home right now, actually. Just in case.

Sunny’s mom nods softly. “That’s very responsible of you,” she assures, and Kel looks right at her, surprised. “I think I understand. Sunny hasn’t been doing well, either.” She looks down at Mewo shamefully. “I haven’t been able to talk with him too much. Everything’s so busy, but that’s no excuse for a mother,” she admits, her voice noticeably watery, and just as worn out. She pets Mewo, and her cat accepts it happily. “All I can do to encourage him out of his room is give him a few responsibilities.”

Then, Sunny’s mom straightens her posture and looks straight at Kel with.. proud, honest eyes, and a stronger voice. “But you’re a little brother, Kel, doing what you can to take care of your big brother. You’re a good kid,” she smiles genuinely, “I know you are. You and your brother love each other very much; I remember that from how you both would play when you would visit Sunny,” she reminisces, smile opening into a small grin at the memories.

“If things still aren’t going well, honey, it’s not your fault,” she reassures. “It’s not your responsibility to make everything okay again, and it’s very noble of you to try anyway,” she finishes, laying a delicate, supportive hand on Kel’s shoulder.

Ah.

Welp.

Kel’s heart has officially exploded. He’s completely blanked and not sure how to react to that.

He thinks he might remember this conversation for the rest of his life, though.

Kel looks at the wall beside the door instead of saying anything, holding his elbows in his hands, nodding his thanks. Yeah, having two moms is pretty great. Sunny’s mom has always been a sweet person, so it’s really nice to hear so much encouragement. Even if he’s not the one who needs it, really. Even when he told her he’s fine. Even when he knows his parents are just harder on him because they’re his parents, and they’re as worried for Hero as Kel is. Even when he knows that both his parents and Sunny’s mom are stressed.

It’s nice having a mom who looks at him like that, though. Minus the eyebags of course. He wishes she didn’t have those.

His parents are kind to him too though, don’t get him wrong. But, just. Not recently? Not like Sunny’s mom, right now.

But, instead of stepping in for a hug like he really wants to, Kel just backs away from her hand and turns towards his house, laughing awkwardly. “Uh, haha, thanks, dude. I mean ma’am. I mean mo- haha,” he stutters. He thinks he can see Sunny’s mom smiling sadly again from the corner of his eye. Ahh, man. “I think I should go back. It was nice talking to you again..”

“Alright, sweetie,” Sunny’s mom concedes. She hugs her cat a little closer. “Thank you again for finding Mewo. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she went missing. She’s all I have left of my Mari,” she murmurs the last part.

Kel finally looks back over to her, the sight of a mother holding the only piece she has left of her daughter distracting Kel’s heart with a different kind of pain.

But then, he has an idea.

“Actually, Mrs- Ma’- um, could I borrow Mewo for a few hours?” Kel blurts.

Sunny’s mom just stares at him in surprise.

Oh. Um. Whoops, Kel didn’t think again.

“I mean! You don’t _have_ to give me your cat right now or ever really, it’s just, if you and Sunny are ever away and need someone to take care of Mewo then you can call me,” Kel amends, “my mom, I mean, my mom’s landline,” Kel flails, “but _I’ll_ be taking care of it, voluntarily, so you don’t have to worry about burdening anyone because Mewo is totally welcome!” Kel rambles, “and Hector likes cats, like, works really well with them,” Kel hopes, “and even then Mewo’s a hella friendly cat so I think they’ll work out fine and I’ll be there to watch them, too!!” Kel finishes grandly, hands throwing imaginary confetti into the air as if he’d just come up with the greatest explanation known to mankind since that old crazy physics guy.

Sunny’s mom seems no less shocked than before.

_Bad Kel, bad! You’re overdoing it!_

It’s a long, awkward moment of Kel slowly dropping his hands to rest by his sides before Sunny’s mom reacts differently. And it’s not a positive reaction. Kel’s hopes sink when he watches Sunny’s mom’s head swivel to consider the inside of her house, like she’s consulting someone with her eyes beside her shoulder.

She turns back to Kel, eyes unsure. “I don’t know, hun… Sunny takes care of the cat, now.” Kel deflates disheartened, but he tries to keep a small, polite smile on his face despite the struggle.

Before Kel can tell her that’s fine, Sunny’s mom counters what she said. “But.. he’s probably asleep right now…” she sighs.

Kel instantly grins like the sun, hopping in excitement, before dimming when he processes Sunny’s mom visibly sadden when she says her son is unavailable on her day off.

Yikes.

“Are you sure?” Kel hesitates. “I mean, if you need the company..” he can figure something else out.

Sunny’s mom beams tenderly. “It’s alright. I’m just going to sleep, today,” she promises, handing over the cat. She does look tired, so Kel believes it and takes Mewo gratefully.

“Make sure to return her at least before nine, and- one moment, please,” Sunny’s mom holds up a finger and zooms into her house, leaving the door open. Kel doesn’t see anyone else inside.

Mewo _mrrph_ s comfortably in Kel’s arms, and he scritches her behind her ears idly, staring into her familiar eyes.

He thinks he’s forgetting something?

Sunny’s mom appears back in the doorway again, holding a slip of paper out to Kel for him to grab. He reads the numbers on the sticky note. Oh! A phone number. For the house phone? He was thinking earlier about how he needed that.

“That’s my cell phone number. I had to get one of my own separate from the landline when I started working overtime. Actually,” she reconsiders, gently taking back the number and a pen from her pyjama pocket (comfortable _and_ functional? Fancy) and scribbling another number on the paper, noting which is which. Then she hands the note back to Kel.

“Both numbers, for when one doesn’t work. If anything happens, you can call me or Sunny,” she smiles, welcoming. “I usually work my second job from four PM to twelve. I’ll always pick up, then.”

“Okay!” Kel agrees. He slips the paper safely into his pocket and hugs Mewo securely with two arms. “You don’t have to worry, I’ll take good care of Mewo, but I’ll pin up the number somewhere just in case!” Kel grins.

Sunny’s mom smiles one last kind, gentle smile, and waves to Kel. “Have a good day, Kel. And, thank you.” Then, she shuts the door.

Wow.

What a conversation.

Awkward, stilted, and Kel didn’t really say much on his end. Mostly just stood there and stayed silent until he blurted out something vague.

But it was nice.

Kel still feels a little overwhelmed? He kinda doesn’t feel like leaving.

…But, whatever! Not important, because Kel has a plan he needs to put into action!

Kel bounds to his house – light on his feet for Mewo’s sake and this time _not_ getting tangled in the trees – opens his door, loudly slams it shut – oops, sorry Mewo – and carefully runs up the stairs to his and Hero’s room, moving too quickly for Hector do more than roll over on his little doggy bed.

That’s where he stops. Kel breathes, calming himself down before he enters.

Mewo is going to be Kel’s ticket to making Hero feel better. After all, Mewo is _Mari’s_ cat, and a sweet thing, too. Maybe she’ll comfort Hero like she comforts Sunny’s mom?

“Okay,” Kel mutters, ready to try his best for Hero. “Let’s see if this works.” Mewo meows cutely in his arms, ready to just be herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _-but in the end, Mewo got outside anyyyywayyyy._ u_u favorite emo song of all time
> 
> Somehow, even writing dialogue for once [because I’m always sad about stories with too many thoughts u_u] I go crazy on the internal monologue. I’m absolutely sure there’s a way to write about characters who keep their thoughts and secrets to themselves in a way that has a lot of dialogue. Too bad I never went to school for writing.
> 
> I blame a third of the word count on colloquialism.
> 
> Can we have some Sunny’s mom appreciation? Like, she’s trying. She’s honestly trying. I mean, I like to portray Sunny’s mom a lot like my own – overworked and stressed and lonely ngl – and our relationship is pretty strained, but I still think both deserve acknowledgement. Especially from a third party, slightly more open POV, a.k.a. Kel.
> 
> Btw expect more Sunny’s mom & Kel interaction in the future, I’m making this a Thing because they’re both kinda lonely, busy, and trying their best.
> 
> Also, Kel’s parents aren’t bad parents and while Kel may be forcing positivity here, he’s right. They do care about him. BUT they’re also stressing Kel out so lol they could do better, just like any parent.
> 
> Oh yeah and on that note, if Sunny’s mom seems like the perfect mom here, keep in mind that Sunny’s mom is not the mom of Kel. So like, Kel’s not gonna be as affected by Sunny’s mom working all the time as Sunny is, mostly because they don’t live together. Plus, Kel and Sunny are different people, and I like to imagine that Sunny’s mom and Kel have an easier time talking than Sunny’s mom and Sunny do. That’s just how it is sometimes.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone has any ideas they want to share or criticism, I'm open to it! Just remember to sprinkle in some compliments if you have a lot to say on what I can improve on <3 professional criticism is a delicate balance, after all. I _may_ or may not reply, because im ;;; very awkward, only speak humor, but i love you anyways.
> 
> My tumblr is [iknowicanbutwhy,](https://iknowicanbutwhy.tumblr.com/) hit me up my dudes


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